Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.
He spends a lot of time in this interview lying, claiming that things that the Republicans caused are Obama's fault (such as the "not working together" whine), but the boldness of this is breath-taking. But I'm glad he said it, because a lot of Beltway media is happy to convince themselves that the 1998 impeachment was an anomaly that was unique to the Clinton White House. Instead, I'd say that we're better off assuming that Republicans feel that it's always an option they're eager to take when an "illegitimate", i.e. Democratic, President is in the White House. That his race and family background causes conservatives to panic only makes the whole situation worse.
Republicans simply believe the White House belongs to them, and one party should hold it in perpetuity. Unfortunately, this idea that a Democrat holding that office is somehow an interloper has subtly seeped into the unconscious of people who would probably even voted for Obama. I've noticed a maddening habit in the mainstream media of claiming that Republicans are seeking to "reclaim" the White House, as if it was theirs to begin with. I haven't heard that verb used with relation to Democrats, who tend to merely "win" that election. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I do listen carefully for these things. Subtle things like that end up reinforcing conservatives' belief that they're the only "real" Americans, and that therefore the White House is their property.
What's funny, of course, is that they just get more shrill about how they're the only "real" Americans when the people who have the markers of the tribe---white, Christian suburbanites who adhere to more traditional gender roles---are dwindling in numbers compared to the rest of us. Unfortunately, we need to realize that their panic over this is only going to make them more determined to impeach Obama the first chance they get on the thinnest of made-up charges. It's not like Republicans in Congress have anything better to do with their time. All they ever do is try to get more tax cuts for the wealthy and push anti-choice legislation. That's not really a full time job, giving congressional Republicans lots of time to concoct ways to impeach the President.
Liberals have a tendency (much more pronounced in 2007 and 2008 but still evident) to imagine that Barack Obama is just as liberal as them. Because he's obviously smart, because he dabbled with genuine leftism in his youth, and because he opposed Iraq, liberals think he's actually Paul Krugman, forced by electoral circumstance (or cowardice) to talk and govern like George H.W. Bush. Coincidentally, this is also Newt Gingrich and Stanley Kurtz's thesis. It's silly when they say he's hiding his socialism behind a veneer of centrism and it's silly when liberals say he's doing the same.
But on one issue it's pretty obvious that Barack Obama is simply hiding his dangerous radicalism: same-sex marriage. He famously signed a questionnaire affirming his support for same-sex marriage in 1996. But he apparently thought that he couldn't remain so liberal if he wanted to be a national political figure. By 2008 he opposed gay marriage, favoring the more reasonable-sounding civil unions instead. He did still oppose DOMA, though, and he plainly understood why gay couples need legal recognition.
The only thing that Alex is missing is that there's another liberal tendency that is probably just as irritating: being addicted to feeling betrayed to the point of concocting conspiracy theories that posit that all Democratic leaders are secretly Republicans. It's black-and-white thinking, for sure, but it's widespread. These liberals will seek any evidence they can find that Democrat X is exactly like the most far right nutter out there, even though the evidence tends to suggest that said Democrat is a fence-straddling centrist who is too afraid of his shadow to ever commit to a point of view, which is completely unlike far right Republican assholes. While the vast majority of people I spoke to at Netroots had a nuanced view of Obama, I did run across in the past few days, online and offline, people who were pushing the "Obama is a member of the religous right" line. For instance, knowledge that Obama's administration---like Clinton's before it---had put a minor amount of funding into some abstinence-only programs was rolled up into being the same thing as Bush mandating that all schools teach nothing but abstinence, unless they get their federal sex education dollars revoked. (This was after the zombie abstinence-only was brought up on a panel, so I can somewhat see why it's confusing, but still.) And, to my dismay and surprise, a Facebook friend insisted that there was no difference between Michele Bachmann's point of view on gay marriage and Obama's view. The method used to determine this was to find the most reasonable-sounding thing Bachmann has said (her garbled and clearly facetious claim during the GOP debate that she wants to leave it to the states---which also requires ignoring that she wants a constitutional ban at the same time) and then to round up Obama's weaseling statements while ignoring his actual opposition to DOMA and his appointment of Supreme Court judges who are likely to vote against it.
I can't actually believe that people believe this stuff when they say it. I think there's an emotional reward to claiming that Obama hates the gays just as much as Bachmann, because it makes things nice and simple. Plus, enough time has passed that we've forgotten how much damage a Ralph Nader situation can do. I'm as unhappy as everyone with the fact that Democrats are cowards, but I still remember the Bush years, and pretending that Democrats are the exact same thing as Republicans didn't do us any favors then. And Republicans are even more radical now. Pretending Bush and Gore were the same is why we're in two wars and there's a solid chance that Roe v Wade is going to be overturned. Oh yeah, and if Gore had been elected and had all those Supreme Court appointments that Bush ended up getting? The gay rights movement would be fully empowered right now to challenge gay marriage bans in the high court with assurance that they would win.
This is where I blame Obama and all Democrats like him: Look, when you clearly agree with left on an issue, you have a real chance to kneecap the people who are eager to claim you're a closet Republican by coming out firmly on the side of the left. Obama allows the paranoids to claim he hates gays by playing the centrist position when we all know that he's far too damn smart to believe the blooey about civil unions. It's also galling now that half the country supports gay marriage. The game is over. The main person you're hurting is yourself with this "civil unions" and "I'm evolving" crap. Throw those of us who are in the trenches arguing with the paranoids a bone and say what you mean, so we can point to it. We're your main weapon against a Ralph Nader, you know. Work with us here.
Because as it stands, I honestly think that Obama could sign a repeal of DOMA, and people would still be claiming that he's a closet homophobe, because he'd probably do so while spouting some legalese that allows him to avoid saying the magic words, "I support marriage equality," and losing the two or three votes that he probably still gets for that.
Monitoring right wing rhetoric and skeptical debunking of conspiracy theories and woo are two of my major areas of interest, so hopefully you'll forgive me for being a little giddy when Barack Obama decided to take the birthers head on this morning by releasing the long form birth certificate they've been claiming they want so badly to see. As soon as it happened, I knew two things were inevitable: 1) The birthers would not accept the evidence in front of them and their claims that he's not a citizen would just get more baroque and 2) There would be harumphing from the people who are convinced that this kind of silliness can be ignored until it goes away.
On the second point, I want to come right out and say that Obama did the right thing here. The only real objections I have are with regards to timing---he probably should have just taken advantage of the situation by waiting until a politically opportune time to release his birth certificate. Jesse, in chat, suggested that right before the first GOP debate would have been awesome. But as it is, I think he had to deal with it and deal with it head on. I was skeptical initially, but upon thinking about it, it's clear that dealing with it was the only option.
We've tried the "ignore the liars and they'll go away" thing and it's failed. Time and time again, people on the left try to ignore some right wing nuttery in hopes that it just disappears from lack of oxygen, and it sneaks up to bite us in the ass. An unwillingness to fight back hard is why ACORN was dissolved. It's probably why John Kerry was swiftboated out of winning in 2004. It's how Terri Schiavo suddenly became a national story. It's why health care reform turned into such a clusterfuck, and why the Democrats are acquiesing on budget-cutting instead of demanding more stimulus. Acting like we're too good to even acknowledge people screeching about death panels and conspiracy theories involving John Kerry's war wounds has proven a failed strategy.
Punching back and setting the record straight, on the other hand, has shown promising signs of working. Case in point: It saved Planned Parenthood's ass. As soon as Lila Rose started going on TV and telling straight up lies about Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood put forward an aggressive defense. Every lie floated about them was smacked down with haste. The result was that when Republicans tried to defund Planned Parenthood, Democrats were able to stand firm and feel supported. Contrast this with the reaction to ACORN---Democrats folded, allowing the vicious lies about the organization to dictate their choices because, in part, there wasn't a well-publicized truth they could cling to in order to defend themselves.
Does setting the record straight stop the lies and bullshit? Absolutely not, and I'm hoping that the Obama administration isn't surprised when it turns out the birthers won't shut up, and that probably will include Donald Trump. But hitting back hard with the facts does create polarization, and that's what needs to happen here. The biggest danger conspiracy theorists pose is not that the public will just simply start buying their nutty ideas wholesale, but the perception that where there's smoke, there's fire. Again, with the Planned Parenthood example, what we saw was that Planned Parenthood's willingness to aggressively contradict lies about what services they provide and how much they do work with law enforcement when it comes to sex trafficking seriously limited how much the right was able to imply that something fishy was going on at Planned Parenthood.
And so it goes with this birth certificate thing. Full blown birthers won't be moved one bit on this. But I fear that a growing number of people were beginning to suspect that Obama was hiding something, because they can't think of another reason you would avoid talking about it. By showing that he wasn't afraid to engage and denounce the birthers, Obama has done a lot to clear the air of smoke. Now we can see that there isn't a fire, but a bunch of right wing nuts pumping smoke machines.
I'm increasingly convinced that the way to deal with right wing lies is to spend less time worrying about the drawbacks to thorough rebuttals, and just issue the rebuttals. I understand the fear of giving credence to lies by attending to them. I definitely get why you don't want to validate some underlying narratives by correcting the record. For instance, there is a very valid concern that by saying 97% of what Planned Parenthood does is not abortion, you're validating the taboo against abortion, or by demonstrating that it's false that feminists are ugly/humorless, you're throwing the ugly and the humorless under the bus. But it's also possible to overthink this. Lies are a lot like fires that have gotten out of control. You need to put the fire out before you start to fix the damage it's done. And with lies, you're not even going to begin to counteract the damaging implications of them until you actually get the facts out in the first place.
With this birth certificate thing, I think we're going to see the refreshing effect that a little truth-telling can have on a debate. Within just the course of the day, I've seen a dramatic uptick in the number of people willing to say directly that birthers are just straight up racists, for instance. Part of the reason was that as long as birthers could hide behind the claim that all they needed was to see the long form birth certificate, there was plausible deniability. Now that they've seen it and they're still squawking, it's become undeniable that they just don't like seeing a black man representing the nation, and they're willing to say any crazy thing that occurs to them to deny that he's a legitimate leader. Hopefully, being a birther will soon be seen as being just as obviously racist as being a segregationist is (and let's be clear, segregationists have tried in the past to claim they're not racist). I don't think that we were going to get any movement in that direction without the White House dealing directly with this problem.
So, that speech sucked. The prior sentence could refer to all of the speeches last night, but obviously the one in question is Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Last night, the emptiness of it pissed me off, particularly how he talked a big game about innovation and moving forward and education, and then proceeded to concede the argument to Republicans that we really shouldn’t do any of those things because they cost money. But this morning, I’ve mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it’s not like anything can be done with the den of wingnut weasels the country just elected to Congress. All he’s got left is admonishing us to try harder, while knowing we totally plan to fail and fail hard. Until people who care more about the possibility that women are having unauthorized orgasms than about the state of our economy and our future, we’re going to continue this slide downhill, and that’s basically all there is to it.
We are a country that’s basically given up. The Republican rebuttals just drove this home. The theme of Paul Ryan’s was “I have a Bible and can talk shit like a motherfucker” and Bachmann’s was “I think my audience is really stupid, though I enjoy the hell out of taking them for everything they’re worth”. Even wingnuts seem to be going through the motions lately. I see conservatives dutifully ranting online about the latest villain they’ve been instructed to hate—-government workers—-but you can tell they long for the days when they could rail about “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs. The country’s lost its spark. The President mentioned Facebook in his speech, and we had to admit that it was the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time.
Just one example of how we as a nation have given up is this story in the NY Times about how legislators have decided to go after pedestrians who use headphones. This is in response to a slight uptick in pedestrian deaths, one that strikes me as small enough to be statistically insignificant. This is after there was an attempt to use some really silly quotes from the Governors Highway Safety Association to blame Michelle Obama for pedestrian deaths because of her evil plot to get people moving. The common theme here is to focus all attention on pedestrians, and none on the people who are actually doing the killing, the drivers who run over them. In some cases, pedestrians are the parties at fault in these accidents, but anyone who actually walks around can tell you from experience how much drivers can act like you have no right to the road, and thereby will speed, pull into intersections without looking, treat traffic lights geared at pedestrian safety as suggestions that are safe to reject, etc. But doing something about that would be hard work, and it would also offend drivers by suggesting, gasp, they have to share the road. And god forbid we do that. Next thing you know, we’ll be suggesting they perhaps cut down on gasoline usage so that we don’t burn our planet up with global warming.
This is just the essence of giving up. Everyone knows that it would be better if more people walked, and that in total, it would save more lives—-there are way more traffic accidents involving one or two or more cars than involving pedestrians. Plus, just increasing the amount of exercise people got would improve the health of this country, saving money and lives. Knowing all this, we should prioritize making it easier and more appealing to walk whenever we can, even if that means we burden car drivers more with things like—-horrors—-having to pay more attention or concede more of the road to pedestrians. But we’re a nation that’s given up. At the end of the day, we’re a country where people will circle a parking lot for 15 minutes to avoid 2 more minutes of walking. Facing up to that sort of thing while making public policy requires spine, and that’s something we’ve got on short supply. So, instead we concede the argument and let the worst instincts of the country take over, while kicking the hippies that have the nerve to want something better.
Sometimes I feel like America is just in a holding pattern. We’re basically waiting for all the people who are still bitter about modernity to pass away in large enough numbers that those of us willing to move into the future can actually capture the electorate. I never felt that so keenly as listening to Obama speak last night. It’s like living in a house where a cantankerous patriarch won’t let you fix anything up or clean anything, and you’re sitting around watching the house fall apart while waiting for him to die. (Vague memories of “The Secret Garden” surface.) And that’s pretty much exactly what’s going on, right down to our crumbling infrastructure and cannibalistic economy. The problem with this is that not cleaning up the house means that we’re seeping poison into the air, and that may not be something we can clean up when we get the signal to go ahead and actually start fixing things.
From Americablog, word that a closed-door meeting with the President, Brian Bond, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and state equality organization leaders generated some interesting comments:
Bond asserted, “There is still a lot of work to do” before DOMA will be repealed. “Look at the trouble we’re having with ENDA.” he added. But Bond conceded that there are inconsistencies in President Obama’s positions. In response, Morgan Meneses-Sheets, executive director of Equality Maryland, stated, “Respectfully, we need President Obama to push for full inclusion of the LGBT community on ENDA, on marriage- we need the full get, not the lesser get. The highest office in the land sets the tone for the whole country.” Bond agreed, but expressed frustration at the often intense criticism levied, particularly by bloggers, against an administration that is “99 percent supportive of your issues.” [emphasis added]
I’m kind of nonplussed; does that include your blogmistress, or do lesbian bloggers not rate in the same category of frustration for Brian Bond? I’m the only “gay blogger” he’s had a sit-down interview with, so I’d love it if he gave a shout-out by name. I was quite generous to him in my interview.
I think perhaps they only mean John Aravosis, no? But Brian used the plural, so the White House must have a LIST. I’ll have to ask John (and maybe even Joe Sudbay) what it feels like to be on a White House hit list.
Anyway, I know the WH, at least Shin Inouye (director of specialty media), reads the Blend and pings me from time to time, but who are these other peeps in power who are hand-wringing over the people on THE LIST of angry, frustration-inducing, Cheetos-stained P.J.-wearing bloggers...
John said this in response to Bond’s comments:
It’s great that you’re “supportive.” But it’s the same argument gay Republicans used to describe George Bush. He was secretively supportive of us, they’d say, even if he didn’t help us a whole lot legislatively. I’m not saying you’re George Bush, but the empathy thing is wearing thin. We don’t want your support in words, we want you to keep your promises. And you’re not.
I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to see the point of view many of us hold - that promises were made, quite publicly to the community to both garner votes and generate cashflow, and now the bill has come due and we are seeing all sorts of shenanigans by those in charge. The delays and slow-go on DADT repeal that ends in a poor compromise and a freepable, embrarrassing “study”; inaction on ENDA, tossing the hot potato between the WH and Congress as to whose responsibility it is to take the lead; Gibbs having amnesia and feeble follow up skills at the podium. Come on. If you’re 99% supportive, that is a helluva 1% left over.
I can’t quite figure out what the people in the White House really think about new media/citizen journalists/bloggers. The equality orgs got to meet with the President, but Barack Obama has not given an interview to any LGBT media since he took office. That has to be purposeful. He certainly didn’t do a drop in when a few reporters and citizen journalists were invited to meet with Melody Barnes, who is an ally, but still gave little information and would not discuss political matters at all, nor did the WH offer anyone on the political side to attend that meeting. And, you might recall, Brian Bond was in that room, was referenced by name, yet he said not one word during the 58-minute meeting. I did get a bear hug from him, though. Perhaps I’m still not on the SH*T LIST…we have to read between the lines.
You know what I don’t enjoy? Waking up and reading, before my coffee pot has finished producing my lifeblood, the press secretary for the White House engaging in a spate of hippie-punching so broad as to sweep up the folks on this blog. If I thought like Robert Gibbs apparently does, I would be unleashing my anger on Glenn Greenwald, because he was the messenger who put the link up on Twitter. But I’m a grown-up, so I’m going to hold Gibbs responsible for his tantrum-throwing statements like this:
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
Which is, of course, pure bullshit, since the PL he hates so much backed Obama up, and many of us were openly critical of Kucinich for being a weirdo who is ineffectual and attracts people who like lost causes. Which is why this statement from Gibbs is straight up self-defeating:
Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.
If he believes that, I have a bridge to sell him in the city he forgot to mention in his anti-hippie tirade. I know I sent money to the Obama campaign, as did practically every person I know who nonetheless feels like it’s our job to hold Democrats’ feet to the fire when they go off on one of their missions to sell out on the grim chance that one of those Tea Crackers waving a sign about “Obamacare” will suddenly have a change of heart. The ugly reality is that the netroots that Gibbs is generically castigating, as well as cable TV hosts like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, are a major reason that Obama won. Good luck with those midterms distancing yourself from the people that got you elected! What’s really annoying is Gibbs is basically freaking out because Maddow and Olbermann do their jobs. Sorry that the Obama administration doesn’t have a bunch of professional sycophants like Bush did with Fox News. But it’s actually a good thing to have honest journalists who do their damn job of holding the government accountable.
Remember, Gibbs: You work for us.
I had two competing thoughts when confronted with this bout of hippie-punching, besides the initial, “So, like, Gibbs really wants the Republicans to sweep in November as a bunch of disenchanted liberals stay home, then?”
1) I am not a hippie. Seriously, these broad-based attacks on “The Left” for refusing to be sycophants are called hippie-punching for a good reason. The problem is that while there are still some Baby Boomers that are fond of being barefoot and a few trustfarians out there with white boy dreadlocks, most of us aren’t fucking hippies. On the contrary, a lot of us relate to the very people that work in the Obama administration—-hell, some on the The Left have friends and family in the Obama administration. It’s an Othering of your own fucking people. I don’t wear patchouli or sleep in a van. I hate smoking pot and don’t do it. Being supportive of gay marriage, being against torture, and believing that the government should do more during a depression, a la FDR? These simply aren’t out-there crazy hat opinions, as much as cowardly Democrats would like to pretend otherwise. As one of the non-hippie hippies who had the specific audacity to call bullshit on the Obama administration’s willingness to sell out the pro-choice movement that offers so much support, I’m especially annoyed. I’ve often defended the Democrats against some attacks I thought were a tad unfair—-for instance, I’m really not sure how much you could have done to corral Bart Stupak, who was so self-absorbed on the abortion issue he actually ruined his own career over it—-but when the Obama administration does something straight up cowardly they didn’t have to do, then hell yeah, I’m going to say something. That doesn’t mean that I abhor shoes and showers.
(Photo: Americablog’s Joe Sudbay took this impressionist photo of me in the White House Press Briefing Room, 7/1/2010.)
What the heck was I doing at the White House?
This week I received an invitation to the White House earlier this week from the Office of Media Affairs to cover a LGBT policy briefing. What was different from the various background and off-the-record events that happen all the time was that this would be an on-the-record, face-to-face meeting with an administration official. I felt this was important to attend, for the sake of you, the readers, to represent the grassroots perspective that progress is just not where it should be.
Thursday’s meeting was with Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes. To back up a bit, LGBT reporters have been on the equivalent of a resource blackout with the administration to date, with no high-level policy official focused on ensuring that the wider LGBT community is informed on administration plans or strategy. And this President has not participated in a sit-down interview with LGBT media at all since occupying the White House. And it shows - we’ve seen mixed messages, dodges on questions (see Robert Gibbs), and onerous surprises like the language of the DOMA brief that came as a slap in the face to the community.
I can’t speak for anyone else who attended, but my expectations weren’t very high (though for me, forking over $650 out of the Blend’s budget for a one-day roundtrip ticket without a guarantee of anything worth reporting was a gamble). You can decide whether it was money well spent.
I do thank the White House for making Melody Barnes’s time available to LGBT media—if only the administration had reached out earlier (something I made clear in the meeting—it would have saved the WH a lot of grief if it spoke with parties other than Gay, Inc over the last year and a half). Now it can choose whether it’s worthwhile to build a broader communication bridge.
Who attended
Seventeen
Sixteen people were invited, nine were able to make it: Lou Chibbaro, The Washington Blade; Jen Colletta, Philadelphia Gay News; Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate; Chris Geidner, Metro Weekly; Paul Schindler, Gay City News; Jillian Weiss, The Bilerico Project; Joe Sudbay; Americablog; Lisa Keen from Keen News Service and your blogmistress.
Brass ones, I tell you. This is going to be interesting. The Politico has the PDF of the subpoena. Ben Smith:
The gay soldiers arrested outside the White House protesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will annouce today that they’re demanding that President Obama testify in their trial on minor civil disobedience charges.
Their novel argument: Obama himself called on gay rights advocates to pressure him, so they were just following orders.
The full text of the subpoena summary:
SUMMARY OF THE CASES
Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. James Pietrangelo II are each charged with two counts of Failure to Obey a Lawful Order, pursuant to DC Municipal Regulations (18 DCMR 2000.2 (1995); these charges stem from arrests at the White House sidewalk, on two separate occasions, March 18, 2010 and April 20, 2010. They face a nonjury trial on both charges, on Wed., July 14, 2010, in Courtroom 120 of DC Superior Court. This Court is located at 500 Indiana Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC. These are relatively minor charges (the Defendants may only be fined, from $100 to $1000, and may not receive jail time for these infractions). However, the Defendants seek to use their trials to highlight the ongoing effects of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law and policy of the U.S. Armed Forces toward gay and lesbian servicemembers. They seek to compel the testimony of President Barack Obama who has, on several occasions as President and Commander in Chief (and previously as a Senator and Presidential Candidate) called on the LGBT community to “pressure” him to change the DADT law and policy, thus allowing gay servicemembers to serve their country openly and honorably.
The subpoena of the President is necessary for the defense to prove that Defendants were following and obeying lawful orders or directives by their President and Commander in Chief, and were therefore under an obligation and authority to act as they did in order to pressure him - in a non-violent, visible way - on this important public issue. In addition, these statements support the contention that Defendants were acting out of necessity, in order to prevent discrimination and greater harm to gay servicemembers now serving.
They explain why they are doing this below the fold.
Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills, then failure to deal with an ill leads to your being hoist with your own panacea-petard. If the entire range of your political program rests on the message that the government is the problem-solver, the deliverer from evil, the Messiah, the curative current that runs through our civitas, then a failure to solve a problem, to deliver from evil—or from an evil oil spill—leads to consternation, bafflement, and profound disillusion in the ranks of the faithful.
Actually, the thing that’s lumping responsibility onto Obama isn’t the belief that government can solve all ills; it’s his embrace of offshore drilling and his sorta but not quite “moratorium” on drilling. Yes, there are some people who think Obama should rush in and…do…something? Use his supernatural powers over black gold, maybe? The problem isn’t a belief that the regulatory state can solve all ills and it hasn’t; the problem is that the actual role the regulatory state has is being approached in a half-hearted manner.
There’s also the nontrivial matter of what happens going forward: it’s almost certain that there will be massive legislative and judicial fights over BP’s liability, and the same people who’ve spent years saying that legitimate, undeniable corporate malfeasance has to be balanced against all the shiny things corporations make will pile on Obama, saying simultaneously that he has to crack down, but in a way that still sends a positive message to the oil industry, but in a way that punishes BP, but in a way that takes into account their efforts, but in a way that…
Obama’s main problem is not big government versus small government or statism versus corporatism, it’s his political willingness to stay in yet another fight with the same political opposition that will fight anything he does.
Now as we saw yesterday, the administration is currently complying with the law, having released hundreds of thousands of WH appointments. That is why you learned that there were 88 visits by various HRC board members, along with Joe Solmonese and David Smith, who traipsed through the WH doors over the last year—and we have zero major LGBT legislation passed so far.
No wonder the Justice Department wants your eyes off of who is getting face time with key WH figures. It’s pretty sad when we’re on the same side as Judicial Watch, the conservative thinktank that filed a public records lawsuit over this in 2009—and won.
In its initial complaint filed December 7, 2009, Judicial Watch noted that the Obama administration’s claim that the visitor logs are not agency records “has been litigated and rejected repeatedly” by the courts, although no appellate court has ruled squarely on the issue.
“The presidential communications privilege, as its name and the Circuit’s opinions suggest, extends only to communications,” Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia ruled in a similar lawsuit. “The visit records sought by plaintiff need only consist of the visitor’s name, date and time of visit, and in some cases the name of the person requesting access for the visitor and in some cases the name of the person visited.”
In the Obama administration’s latest filing, however, they claim that “the district court cases on which [Judicial Watch] relies for a contrary conclusion were incorrectly decided.” The government court filings also note the administration’s new discretionary release policy with respect to the visitor logs, and cite national security concerns as an additional reason for withholding the records.
“The Obama administration would undermine a key transparency law in order to keep White House visitor logs secret,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a release. “Only the Obama administration could offer to release pre-scrubbed White House visitor logs while withholding tens of thousands of other records and call it transparency.”
In a move that suggests the White House is feeling the heat on its slow-motion approach toward repealing DADT, it’s now resorted to trying to stop press coverage of direct actions.
As Ben Smith of The Politico notes in his post “Most transparent White House ever…”, closing Lafayette Park to the public during a demonstration is almost unheard of. Until now, when LGBT military veterans, including barista Autumn Sandeen, chained themselves to the White House fence today.
Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
People who have covered the White House for years tell me that’s an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.
Anyway, Dissenting Justice wrote about Bartlett’s piece, pointing out Tea Partiers have no idea what’s happened with federal taxes (only 4% think federal taxes have fallen, whereas it’s 100% true that they have). Then, comes this comment from, ahem, “MaggotatBroad&Wall”:
Bartlett is a tax/fiscal policy expert. Nobody should dispute his numbers. He was instrumental in augering in the Reagan supply side revolution that created trillions in new wealth and tens of millions of new jobs.
He became enraged with the GOP, and left the party under GWB because of the GOP’s fiscal irresponsibilty. So did many others, and I believe that’s in part why they lost control of both houses and the presidency. But Bartlett took it a step further. He decided to enrich himself writing books trashing GWB and his former party. I have no problem with that.
If I were asked a question about federal taxes, I’d be tempted to think about ALL the different kinds of taxes I am burdened by (state sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes, social security, medicare, and probably dozens more, etc.) and lump them all together in my response about “federal” taxes. So I believe Bartlett is being a wonky nit.
Ladies and gentlemen, your Tea Party in a nutshell: when asked about federal taxes, they think about state and municipal taxes that the federal government has nothing to do with, along with federal taxes that have remained wholly unchanged. This is why thousands of people who still wonder why the entire plane isn’t made of out the black box material show up on random lawns to protest - because they have no idea what it is they’re angry about, which lets them be really, really fucking angry about anything.
This is why I disregard Tea Partiers as serious voices in the political dialogue - they are literally too stupid for their feelings to matter. And if any of them are reading and are angry about this, please see the prior sentence for my response. Thank you.
Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business (despite the New York Times’ assurances to the contrary on today’s editorial page).
So true - the government has no interest in knowing anything about race, because the only reason they want to know is to apportion all the Islam to the blacks, I think. It’s certainly not the government’s business to see if there are patterns or practices of racial discrimination going on in housing or the distribution of economic benefits, or to use this information to address the correlation between poverty and race, or any of the other myriad ways race continues to effect modern society. The only proper course is for the government to pretend that race doesn’t exist, because we can only move forward when we start properly blaming minorities for not solving all of their own problems like the white people have.
Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, “American” was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.
Now, at no point in the entire history of ever has any court ever held that the government simply knowing about racial identification on a macro scale is unconstitutional. In fact, it would pretty much render the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments unenforceable if the government couldn’t collect data about race. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this whole thing is just closeted white resentment of perceived “special treatment” for all the minorities who get the cell phone welfare and the good jobs, even though you can’t have the good jobs to get the welfare. This is logical!
Let’s look at that map of race-blind tolerant America that Krikorian mentioned. If you look at where “American” won out as the majority racial classification, it was, shockingly, the South, which has no history of white people doing goofy, racist shit and then swearing to the Lord above that it had nothing to do with race whatsoever. It’s what I enjoyed about the War of Northern Aggression.
There’s a strong tendency to believe that those who are the strongest proponents of ending all discussion of race in modern society are its most racist members. This is because that belief is true. Krikorian’s push isn’t designed to bring about racial reconciliation or to move past race as a factor in society. It’s a way for a threatened white majority to draw a line in the sand. You can be as racist as you want if you just pull out the “American” card and say that everyone else is racist for bringing race into the conversation.
So, sure, you can make up an ethnic classification that’s not only meaningless, but also steals an ethnic classification from Native Americans (they should be used to that, though). Afterwards, I look forward to seeing you in the comments of every video on YouTube talking about just what the fuck is wrong with black people these days. You’re adding a lot to that Super Mario speed run, friend.
Instapundit takes one of his inadvisable trips out of passive-aggressively quoting people and then pretending that he’s not actually saying anything to argue that the federal government is illegitimate.
“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans—and, in particular, America’s political class—have long taken for granted.
But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the “political class” believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.
“Consent of the governed” is a standard whose meaning is debatable even for people who actually study political science - does it mean unanimous consent? Does it mean that all people in the nation have a say in electing their representatives? Does it allow for an executive with power to appoint officials with enforcement and lawmaking capacity? These are remarkably complex questions for which there is no satisfactory answer; I’m pretty sure that if anyone is going to answer them, it’s not the sample selection of a Rasmussen poll.
Of course, Rasmussen does have its “political class” designation, which is based on a rigorous three-question screening process which has the same sort of carefully measured calibration as the animatronic puppets at Chuck E. Cheese asking you if you like fun and pizza. If you don’t, I’m pretty sure you’re Harry Reid.
So, Rasmussen conducted an essentially meaningless poll showing that the vast majority of “Mainstream Americans” don’t believe that the government lives up to some nebulous and undefined standard of governance, which is as close to scientific evidence as Tea Partiers will ever come.
Monitoring right wing rhetoric and skeptical debunking of conspiracy theories and woo are two of my major areas of interest, so hopefully you'll forgive me for being a little giddy when Barack Obama decided to take the birthers head on this morning by releasing the long form birth certificate they've been claiming they want so badly to see. As soon as it happened, I knew two things were inevitable: 1) The birthers would not accept the evidence in front of them and their claims that he's not a citizen would just get more baroque and 2) There would be harumphing from the people who are convinced that this kind of silliness can be ignored until it goes away. 
So, that speech sucked. The prior sentence could refer to all of the speeches last night, but obviously the one in question is Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Last night, the emptiness of it pissed me off, particularly how he talked a big game about innovation and moving forward and education, and then proceeded to concede the argument to Republicans that we really shouldn’t do any of those things because they cost money. But this morning, I’ve mellowed out on it a bit and basically feel like I saw a man who has given up. And I can respect that; it’s not like anything can be done with the den of wingnut weasels the country just elected to Congress. All he’s got left is admonishing us to try harder, while knowing we totally plan to fail and fail hard. Until people who 
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Anyway, I know the WH, at least Shin Inouye (director of specialty media), reads the Blend and pings me from time to time, but who are these other peeps in power who are hand-wringing over the people on THE LIST of angry, frustration-inducing, Cheetos-stained P.J.-wearing bloggers...
You know what I don’t enjoy? Waking up and reading, before my coffee pot has finished producing my lifeblood, 
What the heck was I doing at the White House?
Instapundit takes one of his inadvisable trips out of passive-aggressively quoting people and then pretending that he’s not actually saying anything to 