Barack Obama

Republicans Can’t Take A Joke – Unless It’s Racist

Posted by on June 19, 2011 at 11:53 am. 8 Comments :

Much of the political press is buzzing today over the appearance of an Obama impersonator at the Republican Leadership Conference yesterday.

Reggie Brown took the stage and immediately endeared himself to the audience by taking a shot at Al Gore. This was followed by a long string of “self”-deprecating jokes aimed at President Obama, many of which straddled a racially precarious line.

The audience was unfazed by most of it, laughing heartily at jokes that portrayed the President as Fred Sanford or noted that he only celebrated half of Black History Month. The act was well received by the predominantly white audience with only scattered groans arising when Anthony Weiner’s groin was displayed on the big screen.

Eventually, however, Brown’s act was cut short by an official of the RLC and he was escorted off stage. For the most part the press has uniformly misinterpreted this as being the result of his “racially-tinged” material. But as I noted above, the audience was enjoying the race-based jokes. The boos began when Brown turned to the Republican field of presidential candidates. The first sign of trouble was a joke about Newt Gingrich’s faltering campaign. It escalated with references to Mitt Romney and the Mormon practice of polygamy. And the hook actually came in the middle of a bit on Michele Bachmann. See for yourself:

Clearly the act was aborted when the sensitivities of the crowd were challenged by material aimed at their standard bearers. It was not the racial material, which they welcomed with guffaws. Even Charlie Davis, the CEO of the RLC who made the decision to pull the plug, admitted that the beginning of the routine -the racially suspect part – was funny:

“I just thought he had gone too far,” Davis said. “He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”

What did he expect? If a comedian is going to impersonate Obama wouldn’t the President crack jokes about his opponents? The character demands that he do so. Personally, I wasn’t offended by any of the material, although I think that it may have been more appropriate for a more racially diverse audience. There was something about these jokes being delivered to such a uniformly white crowd that was uncomfortable. But Brown was not the one responsible for the act’s failure. It was the dumbass Republican operatives who thought that hiring Brown would go over well with this crowd.

Republicans are notoriously deficient of the humor gene. They’ve tried on numerous occasions to develop an answer to The Daily Show with zero success. Their comedic heroes are pathetic wannabes like Dennis Miller, Greg Gutfield, or even Glenn Beck. Part of the problem is that they simply can’t laugh at themselves. The most embarrassing thing about this event was not a misfiring Obama impersonator. It is that they yanked the comic for lighthearted pokes at the GOP, but sat through and appreciated borderline racist material.

CORRECTION: The most embarrassing thing about this event were the speeches by the actual Republican candidates and their supporters.

[Update] Reggie Brown tells CNN that he was cut off because he went over his allotted time. At least that’s what the RLC told him. But of course, they lied. The RLC president had already made this statement acknowledging that Brown was yanked for the content of his act:

“I just thought he had gone too far. He was funny the first 10 or 15 minutes, but it was inappropriate, it was getting ridiculous.”

Brown should seek a clarification. They are slandering him and lying about it. But I guess that’s force of habit for Republicans. They do that to Democrats every day.

Barack Obama Beating GOP Rivals In Their Own States

Posted by on June 16, 2011 at 11:00 am. 11 Comments :

As the 2012 campaign season continues to roll out, here’s something you won’t hear in much of the mainstream media:


The people who know these Republican candidates best prefer President Obama. These senators, governors, and congressmen served for years representing their constituents, yet those constituents were apparently not impressed.

Other Republican who have been the subject of speculation (Chris Christie of New Jersey, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Sarah Palin of Alaska, and Rick Perry of Texas) are also notably unpopular at home. The same is true for GOP governors (Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and more) for whom voters in their states are experiencing buyer’s remorse.

The rest of the nation should take this into account as the campaigns proceed.

Jon Stewart Slams Fox News’ Commotion Over Common

Posted by on May 12, 2011 at 3:55 am. 6 Comments :

It’s been a few days since Fox News had some ridiculously irrelevant, phony scandal to trump up over President Obama. With the release of the birth certificate and Osama Bin Laden being lost at sea, Fox was running out of distractions to the wildly unpopular GOP proposal to end Medicare and Obama’s rising poll ratings. Lucky for them Michelle Obama provided an opening by inviting rapper Common to a White House event promoting poetry to children.

The ensuing controversy was built on a thoroughly dishonest representation of the lyrics to a Common rhyme from 2007. In typical fashion, Fox Breitbarted Common by truncating his words. The allegedly violent verse that outraged everyone at Fox was really just a poetic description of reality in some communities that ended with this call for peace:

“No time for that cause there’s things to be done. Stay true to what I do so the youth dream come.”

That, however, didn’t stop Fox from riling up their gullible audience with a campaign to elicit fear of this African-American artist and to transfer that fear to the President. You know, the Halfrican Marxist from Kenya. Fox Nation posted eight separate stories on this subject. It is clearly more important to them than the economy, the war on terror, or even Newt Gingrich’s ill-fated presidential campaign.


Thank goodness for Jon Stewart who, once again, managed to put this nonsense in perspective by demonstrating the hypocrisy of Fox and the other hyperventilating martinets of virtue.

Jon Stewart’s Tone Def Poetry Jam Part 1:

Jon Stewart’s Tone Def Poetry Jam Part 2:

Maybe now we can get back to the truly important issues like Bristol Palin’s plastic surgery.

[Update] The Fox Nationalists posted two more stories about Common this morning, for a total of ten to date. In the same time frame Fox Nation posted one (that’s 1) story about the disastrous flooding on the Mississippi. Says something about their priorities, doesn’t it?

Obama Hooks Rupert Murdoch Into Immigration Debate

Posted by on May 10, 2011 at 3:51 pm. 2 Comments :

In a speech in El Paso, TX, today, Barack Obama presented his case for making comprehensive immigration reform a priority. In the course of his presentation he shined a spotlight on a prominent immigration activist with whom he has little else in common.

Obama: Already, there is a growing coalition of leaders across America who don’t always see eye-to-eye, but who are coming together on this issue. They see the harmful consequences of this broken system for their businesses and communities. They understand why we need to act.

There are Democrats and Republicans, including former-Republican Senator Mel Martinez and former-Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; leaders like Mayor Michael Bloomberg; evangelical ministers like Leith Anderson and Bill Hybels; police chiefs from across the nation; educators and advocates; labor unions and chambers of commerce; small business owners and Fortune 500 CEOs. One CEO had this to say about reform. “American ingenuity is a product of the openness and diversity of this society… Immigrants have made America great as the world leader in business, science, higher education and innovation.” That’s Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, and an immigrant himself. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his views, but let’s just say he doesn’t have an Obama bumper sticker on his car.

Brilliant move. By roping Murdoch into the discussion, opponents of reform will be put in the position of disparaging their media patron if they criticize the policy of which Murdoch has been a vocal proponent. It makes things particularly touchy for Fox News anchors and contributors who will be challenged to advance their racist agenda without offending their boss. Not that they wouldn’t try to separate themselves from Papa Murdoch. They have in the past been notoriously disobedient with regard to Climate Change, which Murdoch regards as a serious problem, but Fox News regards as a hoax. But every time they wander off in this manner they widen the hypocrisy gap a little further.

Jonah Goldberg: In A Hurry To Prove He’s An Idiot

Posted by on May 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm. 4 Comments :

Conservative douchebags have been outdoing themselves since President Obama successfully executed the mission that put an end to Osama Bin Laden. They have speculated as to whether Bin Laden is really dead. They have griped over whether Bin Laden’s death photo should be released. They have struggled mightily to deny Obama any credit for the mission, while slathering admiration on George W. Bush and his phalanx of ineffectual torturers.

That they are jealous and cowed is unmistakable. Yet somehow there is always one miscreant that manages to stretch the boundaries of the lunatic fringe. Today it is Jonah Goldberg.

In an article published by the Los Angeles Times (to their eternal shame), Goldberg boldly accuses Obama of having made a tactical error by rushing to announce that Bin Laden was dead. The headline blared: “Why the hurry to gloat about Bin Laden?” And early in the piece Goldberg makes an obvious confession:

I’m no expert on such matters – though I’ve talked to several about this – but even a casual World War II buff can understand that the shelf life of actionable intelligence would be extended if we hadn’t told the whole world, and Al Qaeda in particular, that we had it.

Goldberg’s thesis is that the President should have waited a week or two to give the military and intelligence communities more time to exploit that information before Bin Laden’s associates knew what had happened.

What a dolt! First of all let’s set aside the obvious. If Obama had delayed the Bin Laden announcement every winger to the right of Reagan’s ghost would have been furious that he withheld such vital information from the American people. Goldberg would have been amongst the first to complain that Obama was running a clandestine regime that ruled by keeping people in the dark and lying about its actions.

More substantively, Goldberg seems to think that the Bin Laden mission was conducted quietly with stealthy commandos tiptoeing into the compound, smothering him with a pillow, and sneaking out again. Of course, that isn’t exactly how it went down. Multiple helicopters roared into the urban neighborhood (one of them crashed and was blown up), the Navy SEALS barged into the compound with guns blazing, and after a tumultuous racket Bin Laden was disposed of and the team departed on their helicopter caravan. And all of this happened in the middle of a densely populated city.

Does Goldberg think that this sort of mission could have been covered up? Does he think that all of the neighbors, many of whom were Pakistani military, slept though the conflagration? Does think that the Pakistanis, whom most people believe knew of Bin Laden’s residence, would have scratched their heads and wondered what all the commotion was about? Is he so stupid that he is unaware that Bin Laden’s associates nearby were probably already warning one another before the choppers had crossed back into Afghanistan?

Let’s face it…ten minutes didn’t go by after the the raid before everyone in the vicinity knew exactly what had happened and to whom. The only reason Goldberg raises this complaint is to try to use it to bash the President. His theory makes no sense whatsoever, so it’s only purpose is for it to be a hit piece.

Unfortunately for Goldberg, he swings and misses and just makes an imbecile of himself. Fortunately for Goldberg, he must be used to that by now.

Fox News Gives Bush Credit For . . . Everything

Posted by on May 4, 2011 at 11:22 pm. 4 Comments :

A few days ago President Obama announced to the nation that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a raid on his compound in Pakistan. Rather than congratulating the administration for having achieved a goal that had evaded the previous administration for seven years, the GOP went on the attack accusing Obama of everything from conducting the mission for political gain to making up the whole thing. Some critics even alleged that Obama had opposed the mission and the military acted in defiance of his orders which, of course, would be a treasonous act punishable by death.

It’s clear that the President’s opponents are simply unwilling to grant him the slightest bit of praise no matter what he does. They are there only to viciously attack him. These are the same people who ridiculed America’s leader being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and who celebrated when the U.S. was not awarded the prestige and economic benefit of the Olympic Games. They take pleasure in seeing the country embarrassed or harmed so long as they can blame it on Obama.

Conversely, they have a severely abnormal obsession with assigning credit to George W. Bush for things he wasn’t remotely involved in. With regard to Bin Laden, Bush famously said that “I don’t know where Bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important.”

Nevertheless, the right is trying mightily to persuade their feeble-minded flock that it was Bush who brought Bin Laden to justice and that Obama was a mere bit player, or worse, an obstacle. This isn’t anything new. Here are a couple of examples of revisionist right-wingisms as envisioned by Fox News:


So while Bush and his cronies drove the nation into the worst economic decline in decades, Fox tried to credit Bush for the recovery that Obama presided over. And when Obama executed his policy to draw down our engagement in Iraq, Fox tried to give Bush credit for that as well. In short, if something bad happens it doesn’t matter how early in his term it is, Obama is the owner and the cause of it. If something good happens it wouldn’t matter if it were the last days of his second term, he is merely a lucky bystander.

This sort of cynical dishonesty would be bad enough if partaken by a partisan politician or pundit, but when it is presented by a so-called “news” organization as fair and balanced reporting it escalates to obscenity. It is proof that when Rush Limbaugh said that he hopes the President (and therefore the country) fails, he meant it, and many of his ideological comrades are feverishly hoping the same thing.

Mitt Romney: Hang The Obama Misery Index Around His Neck

Posted by on May 1, 2011 at 2:47 pm. 5 Comments :

Last Friday Mitt Romney spoke before a gathering of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded lobbying group that bankrolls the Tea Party. In response to a question, Romney stumbled over language that comes perilously close to a lynching reference:

“Do you remember that during the Ronald Reagan-Jimmy Carter debates, that Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the Misery Index? And he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well we’re going to have to hang the Obama Misery Index around his neck. And I’ll tell you, the fact that you’ve got people in this country really squeezed with gasoline getting so expensive, with commodities getting so expensive, families are having a hard time making ends meet. So we’re going to have to do talk about that, and housing foreclosures and bankruptcies and and higher taxation. We’re going to hang him with that — uh, so to speak, metaphorically, with, uh, you have to be careful these days, I learned that — with an Obama Misery Index.”

With so many examples of overt racism threading through the fabric of modern Republicanism, it is tempting to interpret every alleged gaffe in the most negative light. While Romney should know better than to juxtapose the words “hang” and “Obama” so closely (and his attempted recovery shows that he does know), I don’t think this qualifies as a racist remark. He is clearly using the metaphor of “hanging an albatross” around one’s neck, not a noose dangling from a tree. However, he’s still not off the hook (if I may mix my metaphors).

His remarks begin by attributing the Misery Index to Ronald Reagan. That isn’t true.

“The misery index is an economic indicator, created by economist Arthur Okun, and found by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate.”

What’s worse though, from a strategic perspective, is that the Misery Index under Reagan averaged 12.19. Under Obama, so far, it is only 11.48. And that doesn’t take into consideration that Reagan had eight years to spread the misery out. Obama was saddled with the worst economic calamity since the the Great Depression and has only had two years to try to correct it. Nevertheless, he is still outperforming Reagan.


[Click to enlarge]

In addition, an analysis of the Misery Index from the Truman administration to the present shows that the misery produced by Republicans (10.64) was significantly worse than that by Democrats (9.17). So if Romney wants to raise the issue and hang it around anyone’s neck, he might not want to stick his out so far without looking at the facts.

Obama’s Birth Certificate Will Not Appease Wingnuts

Posted by on April 27, 2011 at 10:16 am. 4 Comments :

Since I posted this yesterday, the White House has prevailed upon the state of Hawaii to waive their policy and provide copies of his “long-form” birth certificate. In a statement the President said that “I have better stuff to do,” than be distracted by made up controversies. The problem is, the crackpots driving this nonsense don’t.

The release of this document is not likely to put the matter to rest. President Obama’s fanatic opponents will nimbly shift to challenging the authenticity of the document or some other equally demented, phony controversy. How can they let it go when they have so much invested in it?

Wingnut Extraordinaire and Swiftboat Liar, Jerome Corsi still has a book coming out next month titled “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.” Is there still time for the publisher (WorldNetDaily) to slap a disclaimer on the cover? Will they quietly permit their investment to become worthless? Not likely.

Donald Trump has already declared that this news is a personal victory. In his announcement he lost no time suggesting that the document might be a fake. But more significant is that he and other mental deficients have never rested their hallucinatory accusations on the birth certificate alone. As I wrote yesterday, they had previously set the stage for back-up conspiracy theories covering Obama’s religion (they still thinks he’s Muslim), his authorship of his autobiography (they think Bill Ayers wrote it), and his academic accomplishments (they think he’s too stupid to have gotten into Harvard).

Some allegedly sane Republicans have rejected the Birther arguments. They recognized that it does more harm than good to the party. They castigate its proponents as clowns. And some even accuse Obama of orchestrating the whole controversy to make the GOP look foolish (as if they needed any help). Obama has given these nutcases a gift. He has presented them with the opportunity to drop the lunatic pose and find something more relevant to the American people to demagogue. Will they accept it?

What now will become of the Birther entrepreneurs Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes? And what about Gary Kreep and his client Wiley Drake, the preacher who has prayed for Obama to die? His case is currently pending in federal court. Where will it leave Trump? Where will it leave Corsi? Where will it leave the Tea Party (AKA Republicans), 45% of whom think Obama isn’t an American citizen. Where will it leave Fox News?

So many questions, so little sanity.

Don’t Pigeonhole Donald Trump As A Birther

Posted by on April 26, 2011 at 12:55 pm. 13 Comments :

While Donald Trump has been manically proselytizing the Birther issue for the past few weeks, it would be a mistake to play down the broad scope of his fledgling (and most likely fake) campaign for president. He is so much more than a one-issue candidate. Take a look at the diversity of his platform:

Donald Trump

1) Obama’s Citizenship: This is without a doubt the cornerstone of Trump’s campaign. He talks about it at every appearance – even those where he pretends to not want to talk about it. Obama has shown the only document that the state of Hawaii issues for births. If Trump wants to continue to believe that the Obama family (and assorted communists and Muslims) hatched a plot almost fifty years ago to raise a mixed-race, foreign-born child to become an illegitimate president, that’s between him and his racist, delusional followers.

2) Obama’s Religion: Despite the fact that the President has repeatedly affirmed his devout Christianity, Trump suspects that he is secretly a Muslim and the proof may be on his birth certificate. Never mind that any religious designation on a birth certificate would be irrelevant. Obviously the baby Barack did not select his faith, but the adult has been clear and consistent.

3) Obama’s Authorship: Trump has embraced the WorldNetDaily crackpots who believe that Bill Ayers was the ghostwriter of Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father.” The evidence of this fraud is the observation that both used certain phrases like going “against the current.” Well, that settles that.

4) Obama’s Academics: Most recently, Trump has questioned Obama’s academic career, insisting that he was too stupid to get into Harvard. He says he is investigating this (are they the same investigators he says he has looking into the birth certificate?). Of course it is documented that Obama had graduated from Columbia before getting a scholarship to Harvard where he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. Oh, and by the way, Obama is currently the President of the United States of America, a job that Trump, with his bachelor’s degree from Wharton Business School, is lusting after.

See? Trump has a comprehensive outlook on all of the critical issues facing the nation, so long as the nation is as obsessed with phony, right-wing, Obama mythology as he is. In addition to those obsessions, Trump wants to balance the budget by stealing the oil from Iraq and Libya, and threatening a trade war with China.

Trump, or his affiliated businesses, have declared bankruptcy four times. He has the singular distinction of having operated a casino that went bankrupt (that takes real imagination and/or incompetence). Each time he restructured his operations he was forced to trade ownership share for more favorable terms on his debt and more time to repay. So his net worth is very likely far less than he’s leading you to believe. His current income probably consists mostly of his licensing his name to other real estate developers and appearing on a reality TV show alongside Gary Busey and Meatloaf.

What better resume could you want for a potential president? No wonder he is leading the Republican primary polling. The only thing more embarrassing than having Trump as the leading GOP contender is the fact that the rest of the field is even worse.

Message To Obama: Don’t You Dare F__king Fire Samantha Power

Posted by on April 2, 2011 at 1:11 pm. 6 Comments :

Once again the evil winds of Fox News are blowing across the land and threatening to whip up a Perfect Storm composed of nothing but disinformation and unfounded fears. As part of their all-to-predictable criticism of President Obama’s efforts to prevent carnage in Libya and to support democratic reformers, the Fox brigades have unleashed a torrent of lies and irrational arguments that amount to siding with Qaddafi against American interests.

As usual, Glenn Beck is leading the charge with his typically factless assault and incitement to panic. The target this time is Samantha Power, the Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights for the National Security Council. Just as he did with Van Jones last year, Beck has begun a barrage of invective aimed at slandering Power. Day after day he repeatedly denounces her while playing a context-deprived video in an endless loop.

The thrust of Beck’s squabbling is his contention that Power is the source of the administration’s policy in Libya. In his pseudo-professorial style Beck mis-educates his gullible viewers as to the roots of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) initiative endorsed by the United Nations. R2P sprung from the post-WWII determination that the community of nations are morally obligated to act in opposition to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.

In short, Beck falsely asserts that the UN got the idea from George Soros who got it from Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell.” The only flaw in that theory is that Power’s book (which, by the way, won the Pulitzer Prize) came out the year following the publication of a UN commissioned report on the subject, so it could not possibly have been the inspiration for it. And the UN’s report was based on the 1948 “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” when Soros was a poor, eighteen year old Holocaust refugee and student in London, and well before Power was even born. Also notable is the fact that R2P was adopted when John Bolton was the ambassador to the UN and both Israel and the Bush administration supported it. These facts, however, don’t prevent Beck from inventing a conspiracy that defies the linear confines of time.

The video Beck has on auto-replay shows an excerpt of Power discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and suggesting that a “mammoth protection force” may be required. Beck alleges that she is promoting this protection on behalf of the Palestinians against the Israelis, and he extends that dimwitted analysis to imply that Power, Soros, and Obama have designs on attacking Israel under the provisions of R2P. In fact, a full playing of the video reveals that Power was not advancing her own solution to the ongoing Middle East hostilities. She was responding to a question that posed a hypothetical scenario wherein one side or the other was engaging in genocide. Her answer proposed a protection force that would be neutral, along the lines of a conventional UN peacekeeping mission.

The reality could not be further from Beck’s gyroscopic spinning of an imagined international military assault on Israel. Beck couples these allegations with a reference to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, Cass Sunstein, whom Beck calls “the most dangerous man in America.” Sunstein is Power’s husband. Consequently, Beck now calls her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

HypersensitiveThe problem that Beck’s vile disinformation campaign presents, other than advancing the progress of stupidity, is that the Obama administration has been notoriously hypersensitive when it comes to criticism, especially from Fox News. In addition to their knee-jerk reaction to Beck’s demonization of Van Jones, the White House also jettisoned Yosi Sergant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Shirley Sherrod from the Department of Agriculture, over phony controversies promoted by Fox and other right-wing media.

This Foxophobia manifests itself in dangerously careless decision making that not only unfairly punishes staffers who did nothing wrong, it encourages the Becks of the world to persist with their character assassination crusades.

In this regard it is imperative that Obama not buckle under to the smears that Samantha Power is now suffering. The President needs to demonstrate that he has the fortitude to ignore Beck and Fox and the rest of the conservative hate machine that is itching to claim another scalp. Power is a brilliant, dedicated, and effective public servant and deserves the support of the President. She must not become another casualty in the war on competent White House advisors (which is really just a war on the White House by proxy).

My message to Obama is this: You cannot placate your foes by giving in to them. They feed off of that sort of weakness and become even more voracious. By denying them their little victories you retain trusted advisors, enhance your reputation, and starve the beast that stalks you. So, Mr. President, don’t make the same mistakes you made with Van Jones and the others. Stand by Power. Scoff at Beck. And exhibit some of the backbone that your position imparts onto you.