Nutbars, to paraphrase edgrimly

You may have heard about the "birther" movement, which is a group of fucksticks that think Obama wasn't born in the US and have "questions" about his birth certificate. Lou Dobbs can be counted among their esteemed membership. That's right, Lou Dobbs, taking his immigrant paranoia to a whole new level.

This week has seen some interesting developments in the saga. An increasing number of GOP Congress members have slyly encouraged the birthers, as can be seen in this entertaining short story:



John Stewart, as usual, did a hilarious debunking of it all that you should see.

When asked about the controversy, Gibbie-san had a pretty good rebuttal:



Today, Democrats in Congress came out with a resolution to honor Hawaii's 50th that also mentioned the Obama was born there, only to find it temporarily blocked. It is good to see them calling the crazies bluff, the frivilousness of it all notwithstanding. One can only imagine whats next with these crazy antics. This stuff is almost as good as Road Rules/Real World Challenge, and also almost as mind numbing, if not more.

Running start

So far I have been pleasantly surprised by Obama. In his first two days he has

Announced he is closing Gitmo
Put all of GW's last minute regulations on hold
Undid Bush's assumption of secrecy in government document requests
Ordered all black sites/secret prison closed
Put all Gitmo prosecutions on hold to review/ maybe scrap Bush's tribunal system.

My hope is that the follow through is as good as the swing.

Obama goes to Washington

Lets spend 8 hours covering the train ride live and call it 'The Obama Express'. I think a name change is in order from CNN to CON (Cable Obama Network). To give it some credit though, it is better than The Cheney Express from 8 years ago:




An Update: Now that the train ride is over, The Obama Inauguration special has begun, dubbed Obama-Stock. My DVR won't let me only record the part with Beyonce.

Another Update: I checked CNN a minute ago (around 4) and if it wasn't for the CNN logo and absence of Carson Daily I would have thought it was TRL.

Cabinets

Lots of people have been complaining about Obama's picks for his cabinet. That he is letting down his supporters on the left with Clinton and Gates. So far it seems to me he is putting together a pretty promising entourage.
The team of rivals hype is pretty annoying for me another example of how the urge to be a part of greatness by comparison to an historic figure is everywhere. Bush thought he was Churchill and now Obama is being heralded as Lincoln and FDR in one.

For secdef it was smart to have Gates stay on as someone intimately familiar with the current wars, plus he will mollify the Republicans, you might hope, from trying to pin gwot's problems on the new pres. He has also walked the line quite well of disagreeing with Bush's more morally dubious ideas while still professing the inability to change them quite yet.

HRC et al could be quite good at sweet talking the foreigners and doing some token or possibly even meaningful humanitarian things.

Gen. Shinseki for the VA is encouraging, so is Steven Chu for Energy Sec is too- and he has won a nobel for research. Sounds a bit elitist to me though. I bet he eats Arugula too. Who will the next nobel laureate appointed? Al Gore for internets and powerpoint affairs? Paul Krugman for treasury?

Holder for the AG has potential he seems sincere and it will remain to be seen if he has the balls to do anything on the torture issue. Another plus for him is that his Marc Rich pardon involvement will cancel out with Gates' Iran-Contra involvement making for a scandal neutral cabinet.

Wisconsin's Russ Feingold talked about cabinet picks and other things in an interview here.

Rhetorical Question

Whether or not you agree with him, it is so refreshing to hear a president speak intelligently. In my opinion I want a president that seems smarter than me. I think most people would agree with that so my question is; what does that say about Bush voters?

*(No offense to my loyal reader(s) who fall in that category)

The missing tape

The missing tape that was never really missing.

Larry David reference

My favorite naysayer argues that Obama's healthcare plan as outlined is a poor one, and also gets in some healthy bitching about Democrats in general.

Sex, Drugs, and Politicians

You know election season is underway now that the sequel to the 04 Swift Boat book about John Kerry, Obama Nation, has come out- at #1 on the NYT best sellers list no less. The author was on Larry King, you can see the whole thing here. Be warned, if you get near the end you hear Larry King utter the words 'boy buggering'. The show was actually pretty entertaining, it is pretty apparant throughout that both the liberal guest and Larry King himself think the guy is a buffoon.

Particularly ironic is the books drug use speculations. With both sex and drugs, it has been like a political double standard in that in order to keep alive party stereotypes and retain the family values voting bloc- the sex and drugs just get hyped a lot more when it's a democrat that does it than when it is a republican. With the exception of the congressional page incident, and maybe Larry Craig too. But can you imagine if it was a democrat that was molesting teenage boys instead of Mark Foley? Compare the coverage of Spitzer to David Vitter. Who? you might ask....well that is exactly the point. At least John Edwards illegitimate child is legitimate.

The book asks if you should believe that Obama hasnt used drugs since his teens since, after all, people are rarely honest about quitting drug use. It's a good question. I wonder, should we believe Geroge Bush stopped drinking at age 40?

Given John Kerry responses to things like the swift boats and windsurfing was basically 'hey stop making fun of me' it is interesting that now, it looks like times are changing, Obama has put out a 41 page critique of the book, and Kerry has made his very own website about it too.

Word of the day: Transition

John McCain is "taunting" Obama for beginning to plan for a White House transition. The quote they give:

“Before they’ve even crossed the 50-yard line, the Obama campaign is already dancing in the end zone with a new White House transition team,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a statement. “The American people are more concerned with Barack Obama’s poor judgment and readiness to lead than his inaugural ball.”

Another sports analogy? They are getting kind of old. And this preparation is bad because....something about an inauguration ball? Is this the old Democrats are sissies line again? Notice the not one but two references to dancing.

I guess now it is bad manners to plan ahead to run the largest economy and military in the world. Maybe it's a good idea for both of them to give it some forethought. just maybe. If McCain thinks you should not prepare, how will he be 'ready to lead' if he takes over? I would think not preparing is what shows "poor judgment" and ensure zero 'readiness to lead'. Coincidentally, the same paper that turned down an article written by McCain had published a different one recently that talked about being ready to transition.

Bigger than David Hasselhoff

Some people are complaining that the media has a bias for Obama, after 3 network anchors followed him on his foreign tour.



And some more bad news for McCain, as it seems that Germans also have a bias for Obama. 200,000 of them came out to see him give a speech there.



Then to add insult to injury, it turns out that Americans have the same bias.

Deserters

It's starting to get down to the final few believers. People are jumping off the Iraq war bus left and right. Iraq's Prime Minister now publicly wants us to leave. He expressed general agreement to Obama's 16 month exit schedule more than once. In an interview, and then after a meeting between the two. It's about as close as he can come to endorsing BO and dissing Bush as you can get while their country is occupied by us and Bush is president. Now even Blackwater wants to leave, or at least not fight there anymore. Sounds like Iraq is such a moneysink that even with the billion or more dollars they were paid, they still don't like the payback. Proving a strong adherent to the doctrine of preemption, Bush had announced that he would be OK with a 'time horizon' which is entirely something different than an artificial timetable-which would embolden the terrorists to wait us out.

Encouraging the Incorrigible

If I were a major newspaper like the Washington Post, I would be incredibly embarrassed if I were to run a front page article like the one about the rumors Barack Obama might secretly be a Muslim. It's embarrassing on so many levels. For arguably one of the most prominent political newspapers to run a front page story that simply regurgitates blogs, internet rumors, and anonymous postings on websites is probably the epitome of laziness. There is barely a single original quote in the article, with most of the 2 or 3 of them buried at the very end. The writer appears to just have did a Google search on 'Obama' AND 'Muslim', surfed the internet for a while, made 1 phone call, and then summarized what he read and called it a front page expose'.

The writer appears not to have even made much of an effort to clearly lay out any facts before giving prime space to all the rumors. It almost seems like he is deliberately trying to confuse the issue. The article does little do distinguish between what it means to be a follower of a religion and having some exposure to a religion in your early childhood. For example, I went to church regularly as a child, was even baptized, yet amazingly I'm as much an authentic christian as Christopher Hitchins is an authentic atheist. Sidenote: I think Christopher Hitchens is an intellectually dishonest opportunistic bandwagon jumper of the worst kind.

Also interesting is what the article did not say. It didn't include very many quotes from Obama. It also didn't mention the part of a certain document about no religious test for public office. It gives lots of ink to the conspiracy theory of 'Muslims' trying to take over America from the inside out and Obama being a 'Muslim plant', but does nothing to address the truth or facts of it.
If I had an 'On Notice' list, the Washington Post would get added to it.