Barack’s Brilliant One-Two Punch

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Uncategorized

Our president may be stupid as far as political economy goes (a stupid “you can’t fix”), but when it comes to politics, he is as wily as a fox (see “Obama Cunning, Not Clever”). It is also true that Republicans pushing the Birther conspiracy are, to put is kindly, no match for this very mediocre man.

The bellicose and bombastic Donald Trump was dealt a well-deserved blow, when, to amplified attention (due to Trump publicity), Obama released a “Certificate of Live Birth.”

The president, who discussed the release at the White House without taking questions, said he had been “puzzled” by the enduring shelf life of the issue and acknowledged the announcement may not put the so-called birther controversy to rest. But he told the public and the media that it’s time to “get serious.”

As was mentioned in “Alien In More Than One Way,” I never understood the fetish with Obama’s alleged elusive birth certificate. “The President is an alien on so many levels, I fail to see why the formality of his birth is more central than the insanity and un-American nature of his thinking (which can be said of many other of his fellow pols, although BO is, admittedly, an extreme case).”

“Besides, isn’t BO American by virtue of his mother being an American? Mother Obama was a natural-born American, so baby BO is as well. The whole thing is a little loopy.”

This side show has sundered a chance to expose the lack of curiosity among Obama’s media acolytes about the president’s heavily guarded school and scholarly records. Obama’s Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago: none has been released, and none of the media that matters have evinced the slightest curiosity about these papers.

Thanks to the Birthers, lost is the opportunity to expose affirmative action, as it ripples through American society, affecting everything from the housing foreclosure crisis—“The Minority Meltdown”—to the highest office in the land.

UPDATE II: McMussolini Has Spoken (Succors Terrorists)

Foreign Policy, Islam, Jihad, John McCain, Middle East, Military, Republicans, Terrorism, War

He landed in Libya, checked into the local Benghazi hotel, looked around, and saw that the war was good, and then he spoketh:

“The [rebels] are my heroes,” exclaimed John McCain, senator for Arizona. And a hero deserves “every appropriate means of assistance,” including “command and control support, battlefield intelligence, training and weapons.”

Only a bit more thoughtful than his notoriously mindless daughter, McCain, joined by “Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.),” has shown no awareness of the intelligence. (Thank you, WikiLeaks) Fighting Qaddafi are “[f]ormer jihadi fighters who underwent ‘religious and ideological training’ in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank…”

From the pollution he has left along his political path McCain can run but cannot hide. Republicans once wisely rejected war in Kosovo. McCain, back then, jettisoned party loyalty to call for bombs from above and “more boots on the ground.” Not so long ago it was “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran,” and the promise of a 100 year war in Iraq, which was bound to break the bank that McCain once vowed to make solvent.

Under the loving gaze of the media, McCain’s jingoism is ever evolving.

UPDATE I: You want to watch former CIA Counterterrorism analyst Michael Scheuer tell the teletwits of CNN that they are “carrying water for Obama.” Scheuer shone on Freedom Watch too, telling the Judge’s viewers that drones give you nothing but a body count, but no progress on the ground. “Why are we there; why do we care?” he asked, while pointing to “confusion, ignorance and even arrogance in the way the U.S. has handled the unrest in the Middle East so far.” I’ll say!

The sentiments expressed in “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn”…

UPDATE II (April 26): McCain Gives Succor To Terrorists. Jack Hunter at the American Conservative:

“Who says there is evidence of a link between the Libyan rebels and Al-Qaeda? US and British intelligence, NATO leaders, and the Libyan rebels themselves. Who says there is not a link? John McCain, who calls the rebels ‘heroes.'” MORE...

NoBamas Bearing Gifts, Please

Barack Obama, Britain, Etiquette, Foreign Policy

Despite animated discussion on the cable networks about the guest list for the British Royal wedding, I noticed that both anchors on FoxNews and MSNBC avoided mentioning the absence of the Obamas. I would have thought that Fox might gloat, but no. Could this be so because the official Left and the Right equate national greatness with the degree to which our political officials are courted across the world? To both official factions, our national honor is wrapped up in our political elites, and not in the common American. Perhaps FoxNews and MSNBC were equally embarrassed? Granted, to substitue for the Obamas’ absence, there are many other odious characters on the list. Still, Margaret Thatcher has been invited, but not Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the last two god-awful, Labor-government prime ministers.

The official line is good for a laugh: “[O]nly crowned heads of states and and political leaders from the 54-member Commonwealth of nations [are] traditionally invited to royal weddings.”

Maybe the young couple is afraid of the “Gangsta Gifts” Michelle Obama might have brought along?

From the grandeur of her White House Crib, the FLOTUS is famous for giving Prime Minister Brown a box of 25 DVDs including “ET,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Star Wars,” “a cheap gift which spoke to the giver’s impoverishment. The DVDs were also region-encoded for North America and could not be played in Britain. Brown gave Obama ‘a pen holder carved from the timber of an anti-slave ship.'”

“Before the DVD and gift-shop gaffes, there was the weightier matter of the bust of Winston Churchill. ‘The valuable bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein had been loaned by the British government to George W. Bush,’ wrote syndicated columnist Diana West. ‘One of President Obama’s first acts as president was to consign that symbol to a box and send it packing.'”

Most recently, as Daniel Hannan noted, Obama “used the Louisiana oil spill to attack an imaginary company called ‘British Petroleum’ (it has been BP for the past decade, ever since the merger with Amoco gave it as many American as British shareholders). … He managed, on his visit to West Africa, to refer to the struggle for independence, but not to the Royal Navy’s campaign against slavery.”

Whether you like Churchill or not is immaterial. The return of the Churchill bronze confirmed the suspicion that Obama was anti-Occident. The habit of giving inappropriate, thoughtless presents—despite the fact that he and his family were deluged with wild effusions of love and lavish gifts—this showed Obama to be, well, a bit of a pig.

Maybe Prince William and Kate Middleton think that inviting the rude American duo to their wedding is infra dig.

[Oh, I learned something new from all this: Tonga is a monarchy.]

Ron Paul Vs. The ‘Revirginizing’ Republicans

libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Ron Paul

John H. Richardson of Esquire Magazine has a great line about the Republicans’ hollow commitment to constitutional principles: “Once Obama became president, the hymen of their small-government ideals spontaneously regenerated.” Richardson follows with a fabulous piece about Ron Paul:

“[Ron] Paul chose to use the new Congress’s ceremonial reading of the Constitution — a tribute to him — to chastise his colleagues for the hollowness of the stunt. ‘Will there be no more wars without an actual congressional declaration?’ he asked. ‘Will the Federal Reserve Act be repealed? Will only gold and silver be called legal tender? Will we end all the unconstitutional federal departments, including the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Labor? Will the Patriot Act be repealed and all the warrantless searches stopped? Will the TSA be restrained or abolished? Will the IRS’s unconstitutional collection powers end? Will executive and judicial quasilegislative powers be ended? Will we end the federal war on drugs? Would we end the federal government’s involvement in medical care? Will we end all the federal government’s illusionary insurance programs? Will we ban secret prisons, trials without due process, and assassinations? Will we end our foreign policy of invasion and occupations?'”

The feature about Ron Paul is well-worth reading. (While you’re at it, here’s a defense of Representative Paul, one of many, written during the heyday of the attacks against him launched by Beltway libertarians.)

Other good lines by Richardson: “Words that other politicians used like screeches of chimpanzee code, Paul actually meant and could explain so that everything from the economic collapse to marijuana legalization to terrorism actually connected and made sense. Like the words on everyone’s lips these days, small government. The way Ron Paul explains it, the U. S. Constitution was all about setting up a balance of powers in order to prevent a recurrence of government tyranny, a purpose emphasized by the Bill of Rights….”

A not-so-good line, because arguably incorrect (the accretion of the state has been the ruin of the USA): “He doesn’t care that it was a powerful American government, based in Washington and willing to invest in its people, that ultimately made the United States into the world-historic power that it is today, with a huge economy and a vast middle class. Nor does he care that it was that strong central government that ensured the survival of the young country” …

Finally:

The difference is that a lot of conservatives just say this stuff without meaning it. It was conservatives, after all, who said that you can have small government along with two wars and seven hundred overseas military bases. But Ron Paul goes the other way. Philosophical and systematic and pure in a way that young people may be best qualified to understand, he lays bare the contradictions. That is the reason his ideas have spread like hidden veins throughout our culture, the reason he has become such a stunning challenge to the existing order. He means the words that everyone else just uses. He’s flinty as a Founder and solid as the gold standard — not just the messenger but also the message.