Birthers And Other Droppings Found On The Press Room Floor.
Exclusive: How Does America Rid Itself of Its First Black President?
Family Security Matters - Ridgewood,NJ,USA
How does one explain the exuberance experienced in saying goodbye to everything Bush and Cheney and otherwise “evil” while simultaneously realizing the ...
Interrogations and Prosecution (What A Cop Out Crock!)
U.S. operatives who went beyond Bush-approved methods in questioning detainees must be held accountable. -Monday, July 27, 2009
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Quietly but Forcefully, Author of Detainee Memos Rebuts Critics. John C. Yoo recently called some criticism "absurd" and "foolhardy." (By Susan Walsh -- Associated Press)
By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 27, 2009
Some public figures, if their judgment and ethics come under fire, retreat into solitude. Then there is John C. Yoo.
Sessions to oppose Sotomayor
msnbc.com - USA
ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says in a USA Today ... If it's"not surprising" then why in the name of God are you writing about it? ...
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090727/editorial27_st1.art.htm
The top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, announced today that they will not support Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Legacy Fight: Inside Bush and Cheney's Tense Final Days ...
... something about a blood trail to Cheney, and then throwing up his hands and saying it was "up to Congress" or some such--a political matter (cuz Bush-Cheney accountability is held mainly by Congress, through impeachment). ...
Democratic Underground Latest... - http://www.democraticunderground.com/
The Birthers of a Nation
If you're going to lead a low-tech lynch mob, you've got to be able to get that Gilbert Gottfried screech into your voice like the Lady in Red does when she says, "I want my country back!" That's leadership for you, ever so much more forceful than poor Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, a GOP moderate (one of eight who voted for the House climate change bill), who seems to be ducking a personal Oxbow Incident by meekly asking the crowd if they'd like him to "lead" the Pledge of Allegiance. By then the crowd is already on its feet, one hand on their hearts and the other on an imaginary holster, insisting, like their dimestore-flag-waving leader, that they "don't want this flag to change!"
It's paranoid, it's deranged, and it's as American as Andrew Jackson and the rebel yell. What's different now is that the nativist right has finally had their bluff called by the landslide election of a black man as president, and their centuries-old legitimacy is in question as it never has been since Appomattox. So they are desperately projecting that self-doubt onto reality itself.
Of course, the Lady in Red couldn't scream the N-word in a townhall meeting (which, by the way, was called to discuss healthcare reform), so she screamed about his birth certificate. Karl Rove mentor Lee Atwater called this shot nearly three decades ago, when he explained how the Republican Party should parse its racism for the 20th century and beyond:
You start out in 1954 by saying, `Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say `nigger'--that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And now, finally, things have become so algebraic that the base goes totally into denial, refusing to see a notarized public document as it's waved right under their noses, and the whole nativist scheme falls into ridicule.
The Birthers go beyond simple conspiracy theories--they're cast members of the ongoing American denying-reality show, not unlike the folks who deny the moonlanding or the Holocaust (like James von Brunn, the octogenarian who killed a guard at the Washington, D.C., Holocaust Museum and who had earlierposted a screed entitled "WHO SENT YOU???," charging that Obama is utterly undocumented), and very much like the Creationists who insist that the Earth is but 6,000 years old, the Teabaggers who refuse to believe they must pay taxes, the 9/11 Truthers who say the government attacked the Twin Towers, and, as we might call them, the Inhofers who believe global warming is a hoax.
The word Birther itself comes trailing clouds of associative fog. It's unclear who minted the term, but for the true believers themselves, it can have a positive ring. When I first heard of Birthers I thought maybe they were subscribers to some sub-catechism about the birth of Christ or an offshoot of the anti-abortion movement--pro-life, pro-birth. Which makes sense: The Bircher, er, Birther movement is born from the same psychology that can trace social unease to a single issue--if we could only stop abortion, we could turn the clock back to Father Knows Best; if we could abolish all gun control, we could restore the eye-for-an-eye justice of the Old West; if we could only prove that Barack Obama was "born in Kenya," his presidency would go away and White Power would be restored.
It's great to dream the American Dream, and the right of an individual to pursue whatever fantasy he or she wants is what makes America so admired around the world. There's nothing wrong with dressing up in Confederate grey and re-enacting your defeat--you just can't impose such a monoculture on the rest of us.
What has been so polluting about the GOP's Southern Strategy over the past 50 years is the winking at racism by supposedly mainstream pols and pundits for short-term votes and ratings. It's the cynicism of a Liz Cheney or a Lou Dobbs doling out MSM legitimacy with each Birther encouragement that really opens a rent in the social contract. Occasionally, you might trip up such media figures with factual arguments, as Chris Matthews did this week with both an addled G. Gordon Liddy and a Republican congressman pushing a bill that would force presidential candidates (i.e., Obama in 2012) to pony up their birth certificates.
But with Birthers and others in the fantasy-based community themselves, no amount of argument or evidence will knock some sense into them. Their lives are defined in significant part by the strength of their denial. Maybe the only way to effectively respond is the way a real American hero, like Buzz Aldrin, did a few years ago when confronted by one of those crazies who insist the moonlanding was faked:
When lawmakers return home for recess in August, they can expect to hear tough questions from constituents on the economy,health careand government spending.
But Republicans are preparing for something else: thebirthers.
As GOP Rep.Mike Castlelearned the hard way back home in Delaware this month, there’s no easy way to deal with the small but vocal crowd of right-wing activists who refuse to believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
At a town hall meeting in Georgetown, a woman demanded to know why Castle and his colleagues were “ignoring” questions about Obama’sbirth certificate— questions that have been put to rest repeatedly by state officials in Hawaii, where the birth certificate and all other credible evidence show that Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.
When Castle countered that Obama is, in fact, “a citizen of the United States,” the crowd erupted in boos, the woman seized control of the gathering and led a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The video went viral; by Sunday, it had been viewed on YouTube more than half a million times.
And birthers say members should expect more of the same in the coming weeks.
“Absolutely,” says California resident Orly Taitz, the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement. “It is a very important issue, one that politicians should have taken up a long time ago.”
But Taitz said that lawmakers everywhere should be prepared to “resign or be removed” if they “do not have the guts to stand for the Constitution and this country.”
Asked whether Republican lawmakers should be “afraid” of the birthers, Taitz said: “I wouldn’t say the word ‘afraid.’ I think they should be willing to resign or be removed. That is what they should do. ... Resign if you do not have the guts to stand for the Constitution of this country.”
Taitz has made nine trips around the country to rally support for her cause. In March, she traveled to Washington to personally hand out packets of documents to senators in the Hart Senate Office Building. Additionally, she says she has sent documents by certified mail to each of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing that Obama is “totally illegitimate to be president.”
While the movement could be “politically threatening for particular Republicans,” Taitz says that the GOP as a whole has a chance to gain from it if it takes the right course of action.
Read more:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25444_Page2.html#ixzz0MWAMvzuo
Open Left:: The Birther Mythos
By Paul Rosenberg
This is what happened with the Clintons and Whitewater-a "scandal" with no "there" there, which nonetheless managed to serve as the scaffolding for the only successful impeachment of a US President since the 1860s. Any and all evidence that there was .... An invocation of mythos, all the more necessary since every last shred of white conservative logos lies shattered in a thousand pieces after eight long years of Bush/Cheney/Rove. It was the Pledge of Allegiance that ...
Open Left - Front Page - http://www.openleft.com/
Gibbs on Birthers: Nothing will convince them
Hot Air - MD,USA
All three are dead; there's no obvious way to impeach their testimony short of finding a Kenyan birth certificate, which would itself immediately be ...
REPORT: Dobbs' Immigration Obsession Out Of Step With CNN's News Coverage
July 27, 2009 5:18 pm ET
SUMMARY: CNN's Lou Dobbs is consumed by the topic of immigration, and undocumented immigrants specifically. Over a period of six months, his show devoted many more segments to immigration than did CNN's The Situation Room, and 13 times the number of words per hour to the topic.
In yet another example of the degree to which CNN host Lou Dobbs is out of step with his network, aMedia Matters for America analysis has found that since the beginning of the year, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight has devoted far more coverage to the topic of immigration than CNN news program and Dobbs lead-in The Situation Room. A study of Lou Dobbs Tonight and The Situation Room transcripts from the Nexis database reveals that from January 1 through July 23, Dobbs had more than three times as many broadcast hours that included briefs, segments, and panel discussions on immigration -- often focusing on undocumented immigrants -- as The Situation Room, which is three times as long as Dobbs. In word count, the difference is even starker, with Dobbs devoting about 528 words per hour to discussions of immigration -- 13 times more than The Situation Room's 40 words-per-hour average. These findings undermine CNN/U.S. president Jonathan Klein's claim reported in an April 26 New York Times articlethat Dobbs is "doing more of a straight newscast than he's ever done before."
As Media Matters has noted, Dobbs' coverage of immigration-related issues has been marked by discredited theories and wild claims. In recent days, Dobbs has also helped advance the repeatedlydebunked myth that President Obama has yet to produce a valid birth certificate, resulting in criticism from his CNN colleagues and other media figures .
An earlier Media Matters study found that significantly more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives appeared on Lou Dobbs Tonight during the first four months of 2009 -- yet another finding that called attention to the danger Dobbs poses to CNN's credibility.
Media Matters' analysis of Dobbs' show found that from January 1 through July 23, the program has spent a total of approximately 74,000 words on discussions of immigration. In a total of 140 broadcast hours found on Nexis, Lou Dobbs Tonight has had 77 broadcast hours that included briefs, segments, and panel discussions on the topic of immigration. The show has devoted about 528 words per broadcast hour to the subject.
Meanwhile, The Situation Room has featured a total of approximately 17,800 words on immigration during that period. In a total of 441 broadcast hours, The Situation Room has aired 24 broadcast hours that included briefs, segments, and panel discussions on the subject, with an average of about 40 words per broadcast hour:
Holder Joins Conyers in Demanding Action (Clever Piece)
American Chronicle
... president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney. Holder, in turn, has now called on Conyers to open impeachment proceedings against ...
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Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Conyers scoffs at doing his job
By Ed Morrissey
During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), questioned the point of lawmakers reading the health care bill. “I love these members, .... They are inane, stupid, arrogant, corrupt, worthless hacks. And they demonstrate it every day. NoDonkey on July 27, 2009 at 11:58 AM. Conyers statement goes a long way in explaining why Michigan is such 'a worker's paradise'. ...Hot Air » Top Picks - http://www.hotair.com/
9/11 and Obama's Birth Certificate
By Matt Osborne
If their energies had been directed in a positive way, there's a good chance Bush would have beenimpeached and Dick Cheney thrown in jail. Within minutes of the post, Ben started getting angry emails from truthers. ...
Osborne Ink - http://www.osborneink.com/
The Origins Of The Birther Theory
Seeing the Forest - Redwood City,CA,USA
This is serious nut stuff, but we saw nut stuff when Clinton was President and it was able to go as far as an impeachment. And then they won the Presidency ...
Roots of "Birther" Conspiracy Are Further Out Than You Think
Daily Kos - 1 hour ago
by Troutfishing "The root of the "forged Obama birth certificate" idea is that Obama was created as part of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to take over the ...
Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 05:20:20 PM PDT
Democrats in the House have just passed a resolution affirming that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Where did the "birther" conspiracy theory originate ? Joseph Farrah of WorldNetDaily has claimed a key role in promoting the discredited conspiracy theory that Barack Obama isn't a US citizen, but the roots of this brand of conspiricism go beyond Farrah's far-right wing tabloid vendetta.
'The Next 100 Years' May Not Bode Well for Armenia
Asbarez News
But since the primary goal will more likely be simply to block or destabilize Serbia or al Qaeda, the interventions will be quite rational. ...
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