Fruits and Nuts

July 12th, 2008

We’ve got a tossed salad of reads today — with the obligatory fruit and nut plate, provided by an amusing Morford and response to Jessie Jackson’s desire to geld the Dem hopeful.

Personally, I found the Jackson issue only casually interesting until Wolf Blitzer began to work my nerves with his pitch about “crude” language that he simply couldn’t repeat on his broadcast … hold on, here! Did he call Obama a cunt, like McCain called his fabulously rich and long-suffering Cindy? No? Did he call him an asshole, like Dubby did to some poor twit, caught on a hot mike in a campaign speech? Did he tell him to get fucked, like Uncle Dick did to a senator on the floor of Congress? No?

Oh … I see. He said he wanted to cut off his nuts.

Wait! That’s it??? We can’t say ‘nuts’ in the US of A? Oh yeah, I remember — or vagina, either. No mention of tingly, naughty parts for us. Hanoi Jane had to apologize to the nation for that, even though she was discussing a play by that name.

We’re somethin’, ain’t we? We can [TWICE] elect a man so emotionally immature and dysfunctional as a leader that he can only be described as a fuck up who mountain-biked his way into the sunset as his psychopathic Dick of a vice president took the country into the heart of darkness … but we can’t use those words to describe him; no, that would be crude and impolite, demean the conversation. We mustn’t have a potty mouth, and we should never ever tell the unvarnished truth in words our Puritan forefathers would disapprove. And while we’re being careful, let’s not mention anything about fascism or corruption or ineptitude or war crimes [see last link,] either.

Would using blunt and direct language be any more vulgar than our Embarrassment-In-Chief bidding farewell to the G8 with this quip: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” It should be noted that … nobody laughed.

It will be interesting to see what can be said out loud in late January of ‘09 … bet me the words will be available then?

Bits of interest today: General Petraeus got his promotion in a near-unanimous vote from Congress — Senator Byrd, bless his old patriot’s heart, and one other opposed; he explains himself here. Karl Rove is not only in contempt of Congress, he’s on the run; Arianna examines that for us, and you’ll find a read on his no-show below. And finally, the Dow is lowest it’s been in two years, with oil even higher than Obama’s expectations.

We’re in that ‘zone’ between the old and the new, politically — and cosmically, I’d say [and did, in the weekly.] The reads below reflect that. As bonus, I’m including articles and links on McKrusty the Klown … ok, that’s snark: on the Pub nominee.

Interesting that McRib is a serial-offense to just about all things new paradigm, but his years in the Hanoi Hilton still cover him with that thick patriotic starshine; it’s nationalistic goo. MSM won’t bust his cover but the voters aren’t so squeamish; Obama’s running ahead of him in Arizona, the O.K. Corral of conservatism. And he’s turning the electoral map bluer by the day.

It’s been mentioned that the “Oct/Nov surprise” might be Mac’s inability to continue as nominee and provoke a last minute change of presumptive. His energy level [and mental process] lends itself to that speculation — but his birth place might be the easier out; you’ll find the details below.

Pray that doesn’t happen; Hanoi Mac is the perfect candidate to represent all that’s old, flaccid, dysfunctional and disconnected from the actual needs of the public. John has given us sixty-one — count ‘em — policy reversals in the last weeks, but accuses Obama of being the shifting flip-flopper! Jeez. He’s as transparent and unappealing as cellophane.

Add that McRib’s chief economic consultant has just called us a nation of whiners — that’s soooooo Republican. I’ve got mine — get yer own, deadbeat. That’s not a sentiment the public will appreciate this election season; especially those Pub voters that have been ground under the heel of their own party’s considerable vice.

Tasty bits and pieces in our salad, today — and DO NOT miss the youtube posted first; it’s excellent. Have a good weekend.

Jude

Obama’s Nuts Speak Out On Jackson & FISA
Lee Stranahan, HuffPo
07.10.2008
[funny youtube]

Hush, Jesse, Hush
Trey Ellis, HuffPo
July 10, 2008

It’s not a presidential election until Reverend Jackson makes an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Look, I’m a fan of the reverend and was a volunteer for his presidential bid, but the more he talks the more I’m convinced that he is hopelessly old school while Obama represents the nation’s much-vaunted “post-racial” future.

As I blogged on Father’s Day, Obama and Cosby are hardly the only successful black males calling for more personal responsibility among the black underclass. Obama, Chris Rock, Cosby and every single thinking black person I know understand that the pernicious cynical nihilism that traps so many young black men in a cycle of unemployment, criminality and irresponsible parenting, cannot be erased by legislation alone.

Any thinking, compassionate person also understands that the government DOES have a responsibility to do much better than it has, and that the shortsighted, racist policies during the Reagan administration to dismantle most of the anti-poverty programs that had helped the generation before, only added to the distrust and cynicism of those this country has left behind for so long. The intervening administrations never fully rebuilt what Reagan tore apart.

True leadership, Reverend Jackson, is not just telling truth to power, but telling the truth, period. Especially when it’s ugly. ++

Aww, Grandpa Jackson’s Off His Meds
Taii K. Austin, HuffPo
July 10, 2008

Rev. Jackson, are you kidding me? You want to “cut [Barack Obama's] nuts off” for “talking down” to black people? You are criticizing him for calling absent and neglectful black fathers to task and challenging them to acknowledge, raise, and proudly love the children they created from the day they are born?

Allow me to introduce you to yourself: here.

Allow me to introduce you to Sen. Obama: here.

If you want to challenge the presumptive democratic nominee on his political platforms because you feel they are inconsistent with what you deem best for the black community, speak up. If you have advice to offer from your own failed — failed! — campaign that might benefit Sen. Obama in the general election, clue him in. If you flat out hate the dude and think his policies are going to run this nation further into the ground, tell us why. But until and unless Sen. Obama joins the clergy, cheats on his wife, and fathers a secret child with his mistress, you are way out of line to suggest that his talks on the urgent need for black people to repair the black family are anything less than absolutely necessary.

Perhaps if someone had “talked down” to you years ago, things would have turned out better for your very own black family? Including your son, Jesse, Jr. who now works for Sen. Obama and had this to say:

Reverend Jackson is my dad and I’ll always love him. He should know how hard that I’ve worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.

Rev. Jackson I am of a younger generation. A generation who is beyond excited about the potential for social change that having a black president would bring. A generation who is also savvy enough to know that just any black president will not do.

We vote for Obama because he is proud to be a member of the black community but, in his words, is “not limited to it.” We vote for Obama because he wants to use both sides of the political aisle to make this country what it can be. We vote for Obama because he is painfully aware of the needs of poor children of all colors growing up in broken homes and, as his supporters, we will follow him closely if elected to see that he makes good on his promises to protect them. But we also vote for Obama because he wears race as a proud badge, and not a bloody wound. He represents an America where we are aware of racial differences, but not held captive to them.

So, Reverend, if you are looking for a new way to defend the black community, I have a suggestion. Instead of calling for the removal of Sen. Obama’s testicles, your ministerial energies might be better spent preaching to young men who, like yourself, find themselves unable to resist the temptation to wantonly father children outside of their marriages. ++

Totally Gay Happy Meals
It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go
Mark Morford, SF Gate
Friday, July 11, 2008

Hey, remember the angry evangelicals? The quivering clan of militant Christoholics who propelled Bush into office and seized the national narrative for a few terrifying moments about five years back, ran deep into the woods with it and rubbed it all over their naughty bits in a frenzy of fear and confusion and lust for all things homophobic and saccharine and spiritually denigrating?

Dying. Nearly dead. Gasping their last. Very soon to be a footnote, a caricature, a gag, a punch line, blasted to the dustbin of history like dried housefly limbs after a sneeze. You should know this now.

Yes, you are right; they already were a caricature, a cultural pothole, a nasty rash in the armpit of society. But it wasn’t all that long ago that they were, through bizarre series of sociopolitical machinations still being parsed by baffled historians, a powerful rash, hugely newsworthy, as dangerous and unstoppable as they were wrongheaded and sad. Remember?

You were not much younger than you are right now. As the Bush era crested, as the neocons’ power reached nuclear levels, when female nipples and f-words and evil gay agendas ruled the news, the evangelical Right — led by the most virulent, spittle-flecked gaggle of mental throwbacks to ever stain the American newswires, Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson’s clan) and the American Family Association and its nefarious leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon — these groups controlled, for a brief, awful moment, the national dialogue. They were the temporary arbiters of taste, the warped conscience of a freaked-out culture. And lo, it was ugly.

Rejoice, won’t you? For their time is over.

Did you know the AFA recently boycotted McDonald’s? That’s right, this once semi-powerful tub of right-wing brain-caulk recently declared a comestible fatwa against America’s foremost purveyor of toxic foodstuffs because, apparently, some high-ranking McD’s VP just joined the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which, to the AFA, somehow translates directly into free pink condoms and mind-controlling rainbow flags in every toxic God-fearing Happy Meal.

Did you read about that? No? Of course you didn’t. Here is why: No one cared. Well, that’s not quite true. McDonald’s sort of cared, just enough to write up a nice letter of response to Wildmon stating, in essence, that the AFA is a bunch of troglodytic knuckle-draggers with the sociosexual awareness of a fungal spore, and they should crawl away right now before God spanks them even harder with the 2×4 of total irrelevance.

I might be exaggerating. What they actually said was: Thank you, AFA, for your hateful consideration, but we support our employees’ right to join whichever socially responsible and positive groups they like. And thusly did McD’s flick the AFA away like a tick from a dog. Isn’t that amazing?

Now, you may argue that McDonald’s and the other megacorps that the AFA has tried to boycott in the past, including Wal-Mart (for selling “Brokeback Mountain” DVDs to unsuspecting toddlers), the Disney Corporation (for its overall corporate support of the evil gay agenda) and the Ford Motor Company (for advertising in gay magazines), aren’t shrugging off Wildmon’s wide-eyed cult out of the goodness of their gay-loving hearts. It’s not like the majority of McD’s honchos actually give a damn about gay rights, or gay marriage, or social justice, or the deeper aspects of love.

Nossir, they do so purely for economic reasons, because it’s just good PR, because they are safe in the knowledge that the AFA’s rantings have exactly zero effect on their bottom line and lots of their own employees are gay — and by the way discrimination based on sexual orientation is thoroughly illegal — and therefore it simply makes more business sense to support tolerance than it does to endorse homophobia and general spiritual stupidity. Isn’t that right, Boy Scouts of America? You bet it is.

But wait just a second: Is it still not fascinating in this day and age that our most powerful capitalist companies, those most associated with mainstream, dumbed-down, unhealthy, rather uninformed Republican Americana, even these megacorps are now openly and rather shamelessly supporting gay rights and tolerance?

Is it not, concomitantly, interesting that no one at all cares a whit for what the hell the AFA has to say anymore? Is this not a sign of something interesting and sea-changing and good? I think it is. McD’s, Wal-Mart, Ford and Disney utterly ignore the Christian Right? What’s next, an articulate black intellectual president?

Oh wait.

It is made all the more amusing, more comical and cute, by another recent tidbit, the final evidence you will need that the evangelical Right has returned to its original state of inbred silliness, and therefore it is very likely indeed that you will never have to read anything more about them ever again until Wildmon and Dobson join Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms in the Great Gay Bath House in the sky.

It is this: The AFA’s Web site apparently has (or rather, had, until just recently) an auto-filter installed. So utterly terrified of anything remotely gay are these kindly folk that whenever the word “gay” appeared in any news story on their site, their autobot automatically changed it to “homosexual.” True.

Thus did it come to pass that many fine stories about American Olympic track and fieldster Tyson Gay become a whole lotta wacky stories about the epic struggles of some unlucky runner named “Tyson Homosexual” to post some good numbers in the 100-meter dash.

Poor guy.

And that about does it. Your final proof that God laughs and snorts and doesn’t give a flying McRib sandwich about any particular gaggle of humans, particularly those who profess that they know and love and worship him more violently and blindly than anyone else.

Somewhere in all this, a moral, a lesson. Perhaps a curious anecdote about how, in this country, it seems like every agenda, every stupid idea, every rancid fireball of ignorant religious fanaticism nevertheless gets its moment, its 15 minutes, its desperate shot at guiding the culture, just to see if it can, if there’s something of value, if there’s something to be learned.

And when it comes to the sad Christian nutballs, well, the lesson appears to be wildly obvious indeed: Avoid the sad Christian nutballs, now and forevermore. Hell, even God could’ve told you that. ++

Pull Up a Chair, Mr. Rove
Dana Milbank, WaPo
Friday, July 11, 2008

Karl Rove had never been so agreeable.

The former chief strategist to President Bush was the only witness listed on the agenda for yesterday’s meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, and he proved to be uncharacteristically contained.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairman of the subcommittee holding the hearing, declared herself “extremely disappointed and deeply concerned” about Rove’s behavior.

Rove was silent.

Sanchez spoke of his “role in the alleged politicization of the Justice Department” and his hand in “the unprecedented firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.”

Rove offered no defense.

“If such allegations were true,” said Rep. Chris Cannon (Utah), the ranking Republican on the panel, “they would be very serious.”

Rove did not dispute this.

There was good reason for The Architect’s quiet: He was out of the country. He had no intention of appearing before Congress, and he had sent the panel the equivalent of a doctor’s note — from no less a medical authority than White House counsel Fred Fielding — saying he did not have to respond to the congressional subpoena.

So lawmakers decided to pull out one of the most feared weapons in their arsenal: the empty-chair stunt. They printed up a name card for “Mr. Karl Rove” and displayed it on the witness table. They put out a glass of cold water with ice, and pointed the microphone toward an empty wooden armchair.

“This meeting today is a travesty of a mockery of a sham,” protested Cannon, paraphrasing the great authority on separation-of-power disputes, Woody Allen.

It was a mockery, to be sure, and it had elements of a sham. But where was the travesty?

Congress knows the White House can run out the clock on the various investigations into the Bush administration. White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers have already been held in contempt of Congress — but even if Bush’s Justice Department decides to prosecute those cases, his administration will be out of office before they are resolved. A contempt citation for Rove, which could come as soon as next week, would face the same sort of delay.

That makes the immediate gratification of the empty chair more appealing.

The antiwar activists from the liberal Code Pink group certainly thought so. Before the hearing began, they entertained the arriving crowd with a chant of “They do the crime and we do the time.” Then one of them placed an “Arrest Rove” sign on the empty chair. “Ma’am, we can’t do things like that,” a Capitol cop told her gently. “Let’s not go overboard.”

No, going overboard was the responsibility of lawmakers. Not only did they have the empty chair at the witness table, but they also put up 18 more empty chairs in the first row, each labeled “Reserved for Witness.” Building suspense, the committee members waited until 15 minutes after the hearing’s start time to appear on the dais, giving Rove’s ice time to melt in his glass.

“Former presidential adviser Karl Rove has refused to appear today to answer questions in accordance with his obligations under the subpoena served on him,” Sanchez announced with indignation.

And we thought he was just stuck in traffic.

“We are unaware of any proper legal basis for Mr. Rove’s refusal even to appear today as required by the subpoena,” Sanchez continued.

Cannon, doing the White House’s bidding, attempted to pretend that Rove really wanted to be at the hearing. He asked Sanchez if she was “aware that Mr. Rove is out of the country on a trip that was planned long before this hearing was set.”

Sanchez evidently was not. “We were not made aware by his attorney or by Mr. Rove himself,” she said.

Of course, the letter from Fielding, supplied by Rove’s lawyer, made clear that his absence had nothing to do with his foreign travel. “Mr. Rove is not required to appear in response to the committee’s subpoena. Accordingly, the president has directed him not to do so,” the White House counsel wrote.

But Cannon, undeterred by this hole in his logic, went on to scold Democrats for opting “to hold a hearing today in front of an empty chair,” which he labeled a “partisan stunt” and “partisan antics.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (Tex.), the top Republican on the full Judiciary Committee, also had some thoughts about the unoccupied chair. “Madame Chair, although we find ourselves in front of an empty chair, it is not a sign of an administration refusing to cooperate with Congress,” he maintained.

Republicans, eager to be done with the empty-chair event, offered to consent to a ruling by Sanchez that Rove’s legal excuses weren’t valid. But that wasn’t good enough for Sanchez, who favored the spectacle of a roll-call vote.

The committee voted, 7 to 1, to order Rove — again — to appear before the committee.

The witness displayed no emotion. ++

bonus

A Hint of New Life to a McCain Birth Issue
ADAM LIPTAK, NYT
July 11, 2008

In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”

The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

“It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy,” Professor Chin said. “But this is the constitutional text that we have.”

Several legal experts said that Professor Chin’s analysis was careful and plausible. But they added that nothing was very likely to follow from it.

“No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said Peter J. Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University.

Mr. McCain has dismissed any suggestion that he does not meet the citizenship test.

In April, the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution declaring that Mr. McCain is eligible to be president. Its sponsors said the nation’s founders would have never intended to deny the presidency to the offspring of military personnel stationed out of the country.

A lawsuit challenging Mr. McCain’s qualifications is pending in the Federal District Court in Concord, N.H.

There are, Professor Chin argued in his analysis, only two ways to become a natural-born citizen. One, specified in the Constitution, is to be born in the United States. The other way is to be covered by a law enacted by Congress at the time of one’s birth.

Professor Chin wrote that simply being born in the Canal Zone did not satisfy the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

A series of early-20th-century decisions known as the Insular Cases, he wrote, ruled that unincorporated territories acquired by the United States were not part of the nation for constitutional purposes. The Insular Cases did not directly address the Canal Zone. But the zone was generally considered an unincorporated territory before it was returned to Panama in 1999, and some people born in the Canal Zone when it was under American jurisdiction have been deported from the United States or convicted of being here illegally.

The second way Mr. McCain could have, and ultimately did, become a citizen was by statute, Professor Chin wrote. In Rogers v. Bellei in 1971, the Supreme Court said Congress had broad authority to decide whether and when children born to American citizens abroad are citizens.

At the time of Mr. McCain’s birth, the relevant law granted citizenship to any child born to an American parent “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.” Professor Chin said the term “limits and jurisdiction” left a crucial gap. The Canal Zone was beyond the limits of the United States but not beyond its jurisdiction, and thus the law did not apply to Mr. McCain.

In 1937, Congress addressed the problem, enacting a law that granted citizenship to people born in the Canal Zone after 1904. That made Mr. McCain a citizen, but not one who was naturally born, Professor Chin said, because the citizenship was conferred after his birth.

In his paper and in an interview, Professor Chin, a registered Democrat, said he had no political motive in raising the question.

In March, Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard and an adviser to Senator Barack Obama, prepared a memorandum on these questions with Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general in the Bush administration. The memorandum concluded that Mr. McCain is a natural-born citizen based on the place of his birth, the citizenship of his parents and their service to the country.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Olson, whose firm represents Mr. McCain in the New Hampshire lawsuit, said Congress could not have intended to leave the gap described by Professor Chin. The 1937 law, Mr. Olson said, was not a fix but a way to clarify what Congress had meant all along.

Professor Tribe agreed. Reading the “limits and jurisdiction” clause as Professor Chin does, Professor Tribe said, “is to attribute a crazy design to Congress” that “would create an irrational gap.”

Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, said the campaign concurred and was confident Mr. McCain is eligible to serve.

In the motion to dismiss the New Hampshire suit, Mr. McCain’s lawyers said an individual citizen like the plaintiff, a Nashua man named Fred Hollander, lacks proof of direct injury and cannot sue.

Daniel P. Tokaji, an election law expert at Ohio State University, agreed. “It is awfully unlikely that a federal court would say that an individual voter has standing,” he said. “It is questionable whether anyone would have standing to raise that claim. You’d have to think a federal court would look for every possible way to avoid deciding the issue.” ++

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

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McCain Was Still Married To First Wife When He Wed Cindy

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McCain’s Birth Control Problem

Another Gaffe: McCain Unsure Whether Condoms Prevent STDs

McCain’s Cruel Offshore Drilling Hoax

Here’s A Little Straight Talk, My Friends — John McCain Hates Social Security

Book Cites Secret Red Cross Report of C.I.A. Torture of Qaeda Captives

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves