The Birthers, the Plain Truth and the “New Chosen”

July 24th, 2009

Today we’ll look at three wrinkles in the national dialogue — all grist for the mill of consciousness, examples of where we appear witless and brain dead in defense of our truest desires and fears. Problem is, all three are drags on the national energy and represent racist/elitist boondoggles.

First, did you know there’s a difference between a birth certificate and a certificate of live birth? Well, not to the Department of Motor Vehicles or the United States Military or any other agency that vets the origins of an individual but evididenty that live birth thing is just a sham, a fraud, a goddam piece of paper like the Constitution when you’re the first black President of the United States. I tuck my head in shame that Missouri is forefront in this delusional debate and that I have family members who suck it up like Kool Aid through a straw. [We're also the state that urges you to buy American by tempting you with your very own Kalashnikov AK-47.]

FAUX News is doing at least one story a day on the birther issue; anything’s fair that might bring down this president. The female Cheney — Liz — is on the Minnow with this too, headed for the island here; a soldier has refused to deploy because Obama is not the ‘legitimate commander-in-cheif.’ McCain, who had his own problems with birth certificates, vetted the rumors thoroughly in his campaign and dismissed it as junk; pass this link around to those invested in this non-sense and water down the Psychedelic Kool Aid a little.

The unfortunate arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for breaking into his own home prompted Obama to comment that the cops behaved stupidly; and … plain truth … anyone with a brain in their head knows that racial stereotyping and belligerency are the rule of the day with cops; this man had done nothing wrong and was furious enough to say a few angry things to the officer threatening him — because he questioned that authority, he was invited outside and pounced on for arrest. I’m surprised he didn’t get tasered.

The Prez has clarified, saying he respects police but that arrest was unnecessary; the policeman in question has refused to apologize for his actions and may litigate for this insult, but his Union President wants Obama to apologize pronto. The Prez called the cop to pour some soothing oil; and the racist underbelly, fattened by a good meal has sucked energy away from health care. Obama’s comment has created a shitstorm of polarized views and accusations; and … lest we forget … this is about the first time EVER that a president has criticized the Brave Boyz in Blue. File that under “myth busting.”

If you watch TV, you’ll see a gazillion cop shows in prime time, our national preoccupation; they’re the new ‘cowboys.’ In most of them, there’s a thread of vigilantism woven through the psyche of those in authority. We have a serious problem with police brutality in our nation, race aside; it remains subtle until it explodes up in everbody’s face, and we got a little taste of it in Cambridge. Anybody who doesn’t see this attitudinal meme will get their own personal eye-opener sooner or later, with their kid strip-searched for contraband gum-drops or their Granny lit up like a Christmas tree with 50,000 volts for crossing the street against traffic.

Unquestioned authority is NOT the American way — but it’s certainly the Conservative way; in some delusional trance, they all think they ARE the authority that mustn’t be questioned. That’s why it will backfire on them; but not soon enough to keep them from portraying Obama as an ‘angry black man’ because of his comment. Well, count me in as an angry white woman and tree-hugging hippy who remembers when free speech was still allowed in your own home! I also recall being able to demand the name and badge number of an officer without being handcuffed. Let’s not forget the pepper spray and helicopter incident at the San Diego fundraiser for a Dem candidate running for “Duke” Cunningham’s old seat not long ago.

In a somewhat unsual tit/tat that points up the vindictiveness of this current period, we get a somewhat radical response from the Cambridge Union President on Obama’s comment, thus: “I am disgraced that he is our commander-in-chief.” Seriously? That’s what he wants to tell the nation to prove that a racism charge is bogus? That might go a ways to explain how four cops, post-diversity training, in Texas felt free to pass along racist anti-Obama e-mail. Tip of the iceberg. The good news is that thanks to the supposed ’stumble’ of the president, we may finally break the silence on this topic and take a closer look at the police force in this nation and the mindlessness of growing local authoritarianism.

The last absurd wrinkle … filed under ‘dying gasps’ … is this “C” Street business. During the Bushie years I covered The Family, the fascist-leaning Fundy group that regularly holds Prayer Breakfasts in Washington and includes some big names, including Ms. Clinton [who goes her own way, so that doesn't worry me particularly; the God she worships, i.e. the combined power of Hil and Bill, uses whatever's available to her advantage.] The true sicko’s at the center of this movement are being outed nicely now, because the sexual peccadilloes of the Born Again’s are drawing attention to it [and in this case, because Rachel Maddow is a mensch.]

You may have wondered how people like John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer can be politically destroyed by their journeys off the reservation, while folks like Mark and John and their wide-stance contemporaries in Congress can just carry on as if nothing happened; it turns out that’s because the Pubs are anointed by God, the ‘chosen ones,’ who can feel free to ignore the censure of any but the Most High who likes it when they flex their power, for good or ill. You’ll find their rationale in the “C” Street dialogues. This is more than the the sum of its parts, when you dig through its bowels; this is cesspool of revisionism and theocratic arrogance that needs pumping, and badly — restoring the separation of church and state depends it.

In the 70s we called this a cult … now we call it governmental business as usual. The religious ideology of Conservative exceptionalism must be beaten into pulp if we are to come out of our delusional fog. As Frederick Clarkson, [linked below] journalist and author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy wrote in the commentary History is Powerful: Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters:

The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America’s supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.

But the Christian nationalist narrative has a fatal flaw: it is based on revisionist history that does not stand up under scrutiny. The bad news is that to true believers, it does not have to stand up to the facts of history to be a powerful and animating part of the once and future Christian nation. Indeed, through a growing cottage industry of Christian revisionist books and lectures now dominating the curricula of home schools and many private Christian academies, Christian nationalism becomes a central feature of the political identity of children growing up in the movement. The contest for control of the narrative of American history is well underway.

This big ol’ collection of weekend reads range from entertaining, like the last from Mark Morford, to aggravating like the one from Righty NewsMax. These wrinkles are being called, and rightly, distractions — but they’re the kind that link to little cancerous nodules spread through the body politic. When these concerns show up in Congress as Bills, as has the birth fiasco and the “C” Street influence, it’s serious enough to warrant a weekend look. And, if you need something more substantive, here’s Krugman on Obama’s health care presser and the woeful lack of intelligence in the discussion.

Oh, and by the way — the Blue Dogs suck and here’s the link to my Weekly.

Jude

Shiny Objects
dday, Hullabaloo
Friday, July 24, 2009

At a time where all the policy focus is on reforming health care for the first time in a generation, white reporters everywhere are obsessed with the story of a black man arrested in his own home for daring to be angry about it, and how terrible it was for the President to speak on behalf of those in such a circumstance. Similarly, while health care and urgent domestic issues demand attention, the wingnuts want to talk about Obama’s birth certificate and some grand conspiracy to plant certificates of live birth in Hawaii and articles in the local paper 47 years ago in the hopes that later on a biracial kid growing up on the islands in the 1960s would fulfill the obvious goal of becoming President. G. Gordon Liddy was absurd and doddering last night on Hardball. He lied about a deposition from Obama’s grandmother that the President was born in Kenya, a result of mistranslation. But you know what he did? He ate up five and a half minutes on prime time cable TV. I know that Chris Matthews was basically beating up on Liddy and the Birther movement in general. But that old saying about how there’s no such thing as bad publicity? It’s especially true when time is finite.

Bill Scher sees a linkage between those willing to believe the Birther nonsense and those willing to believe in the myth of socialized medicine in the Obama health care plan.

The Birther movement has received renewed attention in recent days, after video of a Birther-dominated congressional town hall surfaced, and CNN’s Lou Dobbs attempted to legitimize the conspiracy theory.

Less noticed is the propensity of Birthers to also believe the other conservative conspiracy theory: President Obama’s health care plan is a socialist takeover of our medical system.

The long-standing high-traffic conservative website World Net Daily regularly leads its front page with the latest Birther news, but that is directly followed by the latest “socialized medicine” news. (Well actually, sandwiched between the two sets of conspiracies are the all important “Special Offers!” — such as “Turn $200 investment into $1 million. Sound impossible?”)

Beneath its Birther fever swamp, World Net Daily offers the “Breaking News” that Congress plans mandatory “counseling” for seniors that will “attempt to convince seniors to die,” (the latest smear job from the discredited Betsy McCaughey) and the “Exclusive” that congressional members have exempted themselves from the public plan option (it’s so “exclusive” to WND because the opposite is true.)

And at that infamous town hall for (non-Birther) Rep. Michael Castle, the loud Birther crowd also gave cheers and applause to an audience member who ranted: “if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down.”

I just think it’s about distraction. The Birther movement exists to rally a certain group of people and get the media chasing after them. It’s a sideshow, and it makes for good TV. In the 1990s it was the murder of Vince Foster and a whole other lot of insane conspiracy theories. It made the more plausible but just as wrong conspiracy theories easier for the media to swallow. It’s Overton Window stuff to the extreme. But in the short term, it just kicks the debate away from the focus sought by the White House and the majority of the country. The same with the Gates comments.

The media fail to see their role in all of this. They are not bystanders. They make editorial decisions to follow one story over another. They can devote resources wherever they choose. They could convene panels of health care policy experts and go over the issue that affects everyone’s life in a visceral way. Or they could focus on the sideshow. They choose the latter, and that choice is not “driven by events,” or whatever they would say to cover themselves. ++

McCain Campaign Investigated, Dismissed Obama Citizenship Rumors
Frivolous ‘Birther’ Lawsuits Fuel Conspiracy Theories, Media Coverage
David Weigel, Washington Independent
7/24/09

In the final months of the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign learned of a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania that asked the state to strip Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of the Democratic nomination on suspicion that he was not an American citizen. The complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief was filed by Phil Berg, a former deputy state attorney general who left government in 1990 for a series of gadfly political campaigns. His last round of notoriety had come when he filed RICO complaints against George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and multiple members of the Bush administration for “accountability” for the 9/11 attacks. Still, Berg’s complaint had gotten glancing local media attention, and the Democratic National Committee’s counsel had filed a motion to dismiss it. One lawyer who was doing some work for the campaign was tasked with reading Berg’s lawsuit and gauging its chances of success.

“The conversation was along the lines of ‘this is idiotic, but explain to me why,’” said the lawyer, who spoke under condition of anonymity to TWI. “I looked at whether the lawsuit was going to be dismissed. I said yes.”

Berg’s main problem was the one that has bedeviled the the small, but growing, number of lawyers and amateur attorneys who have filed frivolous lawsuits against President Obama on the “question” of his American citizenship. He and they have run up against the doctrine of standing, which requires plaintiffs to prove that they have been or will be harmed by the law that they’re challenging. Like the people who challenged McCain’s citizenship in 2008 and 2000, or the people who challenged Dick Cheney’s right to run for vice president because he, like George W. Bush, resided in Texas, “birther” plaintiffs have failed again and again to get their cases heard because they lack standing.

“We monitored the progress of these lawsuits against the Obama campaign,” said Trevor Potter, a Washington attorney who served as general counsel to the 2008 and 2000 McCain presidential campaigns. “The McCain campaign faced a series of lawsuits like this, too, alleging that he could not be president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Both campaigns took the position that these plaintiffs lacked standing.”

But the flawed conception of the many “birther” lawsuits, coupled with the inexperience and foul-ups of “birther” lawyers, have only fed the frenzy over Obama’s legitimacy to serve as president of the United States. A survey of the lawsuits filed against Obama reveals a reliance on widely debunked rumors, bogus stories sourced back to web sites, affidavits from “experts” who refuse to provide credentials or even their real names, and frequent and blatant misunderstandings of basic constitutional law. The dismissal of “birther” lawsuits has allowed conspiracy theorists to believe that the information in those suits is accurate–a belief that manifests itself in the emails, phone calls, and town hall meeting rants that have pushed the theories into the mainstream media and the halls of Congress.

While they ruled out any chance of the ‘birther’ lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”

“Birther” lawyers and bloggers, who gained an unexpected prominence in the mainstream media, have consistently denied Hawaii’s own records of Obama’s birth. They have also built up a corpus of information which, they argue, would invalidate Obama’s claim on the White House even if he was born in the United States. These rumors, and the inability of “birther” lawyers to test them in court, have proven pervasive enough to fuel the conspiracy theories.

After the DNC requested a dismissal of Berg’s lawsuit, he responded in a Sept. 29, 2008 filing that cited numerous Internet rumors and incorrect citations of American and international law. Berg cited “Wikipedia Italian version” and “Rainbow Edition News Letter” as evidence that Obama had not been clear about which hospital he was born in; he alleged that Obama must have been adopted by Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian man who married Obama’s mother when the future president was five years old, because he attended elementary school in that country. Because a contemporary school record referred to Obama as “Barry Soetoro” and listed his nationality as “Indonesian,” Berg argued that there was “absolutely no way Obama could have ever regained ‘natural born’ status.”

“That’s just completely wrong,” said Mitzi Torri, an Arizona-based immigration lawyer. Torri pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which sets a high bar for renunciation of American citizenship. According to the INA, an American can only forfeit his citizenship if he commits treason, if he makes a “formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state,” or if he becomes a citizen of another country “upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent.”

“Berg wants to say,” said Torri, “that this document from a school in Indonesia, which has no signature, which has no standing whatsoever, is more important than Obama’s birth certificate or our immigration law.”

Berg’s filings made other claims that have shown up in anti-Obama lawsuits and in the proliferation of “birther” Website. One relies on an audio tape of Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah Obama, who lives in Kenya, being goaded into saying (through a translator) that the future president was born in Kenya before quickly correcting herself. (A doctored version of this tape, which cuts off before the retraction, is posted on YouTube.) Another claim: Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981, when it was illegal for an American to do so, suggesting that he used a non-American passport. The problem is that there never was any such ban.

“We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since,” said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the State Department.

“We got that from someplace,” Berg told TWI on Thursday. In an email, he added his paralegal was “reviewing” his files on Pakistan. Yet the false claim appears in Orly Taitz’s lawsuit on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, which argues that Obama visited Pakistan “when entrance to Pakistan was banned to Americans, Christians and Jews,” proof that he gave up his American citizenship.

In October 2008, when Berg v. Obama et al was dismissed for lack of standing, the attorney told sympathetic reporters that the DNC had “admitted” the truth about Obama’s citizenship by not rebutting his claims. Joseph Sandler, who filed motions to dismiss Berg’s case and other Obama citizenship lawsuits as general counsel, explained why claims like these are never debunked by lawyers for the president.

“When you file a motion to dismiss, to try to get the case thrown out before any factual inquiry is made, the facts that the plaintiffs put into their complaint are assumed to be true,” said Sandler. “You have to show that even if the facts were true, they don’t have a case.”

As a result of that, extremely questionable theories and “facts” have become linchpins of ‘birther’ theories. ‘Birthers’ who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth often cite the expertise of “Dr. Ron Polarik,” a self-described “expert in computer graphics” who maintains a blog at Townhall.com and has recorded a video, in which his face and voice are blurred, explaining how the image was “forged” with Adobe Photoshop. “Polarik” submitted an affidavit in support Orly Taitz’s Keyes case that is signed “XXXXXXXXXXX,” making it inadmissible.

“If it ever comes down to it,” explained Gary Kreep, another lawyer for Keyes, “we’ll use his real name.”

Some anti-Obama claims take the issue entirely out of the hands of the president or Hawaii officials. Carl Swensson, a conservative activist from Georgia, has organized “Citizens’ Grand Juries” that have indicted the president for treason. Mario Apuzzo, a New Jersey attorney, has sued Obama on the grounds that he never was, and never could be, a “natural born” citizen. Both men pass over precedent for “The Law of Nations,” the 1758 treatise by the 18th century French scholar Emerich de Vattel. In one translation, de Vattel writes that “the natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

That’s enough for some Obama ‘birthers’ to say that Obama might be a citizen of Kenya–as one constituent of Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) put it–but he cannot be a natural born citizen of the United States. “It’s what the founding fathers used,” explained Swensson.

Constitutional scholars consider this a dubious argument at best. “The framers of the 14th Amendment thought about this,” explained Elizabeth Wydra, chief counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center. “They wanted to make sure that the children of slaves who were brought here illegally, slaves who were brought into this country after the end of the slave trade, would be citizens.”

Apuzzo is not convinced. He argued that the founders wrote the phrase “natural born citizen” for a reason; to make sure that no one with “blood ties” to another country could become president. He speculated what might happen if Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), whose parents were Indian, became president. “India is a nuclear power. Here comes the president, who says we have to go in and attack Pakistan. Are we doing that because we are defending India’s interests? You just don’t know. You can’t have Constitutional rule if you allow this.”

Because of the dismissal tactics used by lawyers for the president, John McCain, and both political parties, believers in these various theories and readings of the Constitution argue that they have never been proven wrong. Although Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) explained his support of a House bill that would require copies of birth certificates from presidential candidates by saying it would “put all this to rest,” the very frivolity and obscurity of the challenges to Obama suggest the beginning of a conspiracy theory that will never be debunked to the satisfaction of its believers. ++

‘Birther’ Movement Dogs Republicans
Ten Members of Congress Sign on to Presidential Birth Certificate Bill
David Weigel, Washington Independent
7/17/09

Kris Kobach is a law professor with degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford, and a veteran of George W. Bush’s administration who, after Sept. 11, helped craft the policy on domestic registration of foreign visitors to the United States. In May, he announced a run for Kansas secretary of state, campaigning for photo ID requirements at the voting booth. He’s considered a clear front-runner for the job. But over the weekend, Kobach spoke at a Republican Party barbecue and committed a minor gaffe. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, Kobach “asked what President Obama and God had in common, with the punchline being neither has a birth certificate.” [...]

Lou Dobbs Demands to See Proof of Obama Conception
Will Menaker, HuffPo
July 23, 2009

WASHINGTON DC — CNN cable news pundit and radio host, Lou Dobbs, has joined the growing chorus of voices concerned about the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, based on lingering questions regarding the President’s birth certificate and status as a natural-born U.S. citizen. “There are questions here, folks,” said Dobbs on his nightly CNN program.

“Questions that could be easily resolved if only the president would produce a copy of his birth certificate, a copy other than the one he already released.” Not content with the document already certified by the State of Hawaii, or the notice of birth in published in the local papers, Dobbs speculated that this issue would remain relevant, until it was adequately dealt with to his satisfaction. Saying, “we need some real solid proof other than these ‘documents.’ A photo or footage of some kind, clearly depicting Obama’s alleged parents engaging in some kind of unprotected intercourse or sexual congress while holding up an American newspaper with a date corresponding to his birth in August of 1961 would go a long way towards dispelling these rumors, but unfortunately the White House has been less than forthcoming on this matter.”

Dobbs’ demand for proof of the Obama conception picked up steam on the Hill, when several Republican Reps. co-sponsored a bill that would require all future presidential candidates to provide, “detailed video or photographic documentation of their mothers and fathers having sex.” “This bill is about clearing up any potential doubts there may be in the future,” said Rep. John Campbell (R-CA). A grainy or badly blurred copy will not do either, “As Americans we demand nothing less from our leaders than a clear, unaltered, unedited shot of the moment when their fathers’ erect penis ejaculated sperm into their mothers’ vagina on God-given American soil,” Campbell stated, before qualifying his comment by declaring, “As far as I know, that is how U.S. children are made.”

The “Where American Babies Come From Act” has gained support from Fox News and Talk Radio, including rising star Glenn Beck, who suggested setting up an independent “people’s commission” of “patriots and citizens” to verify and bear witness to any sex act that could potentially produce an American president. “This is dangerous people” intoned Beck. “Mark my words, as we speak illegal immigrants and ACORN operatives are impregnating American women on foreign soil and planting forged documents ahead of time, so that in forty or fifty years they can get one of these ‘children’ elected president and complete their final goal of destroying liberty in America.”

Proof of birth and conception may not go far enough for some, including former Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who warned of a looming “constitutional, philosophical, and existential crisis” unless the “usurper” Obama could provide some proof of his actual existence. “My perception of the figure called ‘Obama’ does not necessarily correlate to an objective reality,” said Keyes. “Obama’s existence cannot be known unless identified through thoughts, memories, and feelings, all of which are subjective, and so it is not unreasonable to question the reality of his very being.” It is likely that these questions about Obama’s citizenship and alleged existence will continue until such a time as when The White House can prove something is not to someone who has experienced a reality of something that is. ++

Chris Matthews Wrong on Obama Birth Certificate
Jim Meyers, NewsMax
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Jon Stewart On Point
tristero, Hullabaloo

I’ve heard it said, with sorrow and shame, that when a comedian becomes the most trusted person in America, we’ve tumbled an incalculable distance from the Olympian heights of Cronkite and Murrow.

I grew up with Cronkite (even met him a few times). And while, Murrow was a little before my time, I’ve watched and listened to a substantial number of his broadcasts (well worth it). And yes, they were both brilliant, decent human beings who worked hard - and their enormously talented collaborators worked equally hard - to make sense of the complex, bewildering issues of the day. Their work was essential.

But neither was capable of this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
The Born Identity

Of course I laughed my head off. But there is a very serious, very sobering reality behind all the humor: Until the so-called news media stops providing access to jokers like the birthers, then the best news reports in America will be produced by a professional comedian.

In the early 21st century, when a lunatic bill to permit carrying concealed weapons across state lines was only narrowly defeated, ridicule and humor are at least as important as dispassionate analysis of the issues. I’ll go further: Sober discussion of Republican idiocy is exactly wrong. There lie monsters.

If only Bush and Cheney and Perle and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and So On had been relentlessly and loudly laughed at when they suggested going to war with a country that hadn’t attacked us (and couldn’t), perhaps it would have been impossible to muster anything resembling a serious coalition to authorize Bush to invade. The very notion would simply be beyond the pale of rational discourse, as it should have been.

But no. People took the idea oh so very seriously. They discussed it, called invading Iraq for no reason whatsoever a bold, audacious, and breathtaking notion. Liberals discussed it, or kept their mouths shuts. They uttered barely a peep when Bush’s minions, on the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, compared Bush’s impatient war mongering to Kennedy’s determination not to fall into nuclear war by accident or angry impulse.

And the war came.

Oh yes, newcomers, I wasn’t kidding. Back before the Bush/Iraq war, the Most Respected People In America described Bush’s mad folly as a “bold,” “audacious,” and “breathtaking” undertaking. It was never called what it really was: “bonkers,” “wacko,” “ludicrous, even perverted.” In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the mainstream before about 2005 - by which time Bush’s war crimes and the resulting chaos had already led many thousands to the slaughter - daring to call the idea of the invasion so much as “irresponsible.”

I have no doubt that one of the biggest mistakes the media and many liberals made in 2002 was to take seriously the crazies who proposed war. It provided them cachet, status, gravitas, even a weird kind of charisma (not just Commander Codpiece: Rumsfeld became kind of a sex god to many mainstream pundits).

Cronkite, I loved you, still do. But sometimes it’s altogether fitting and proper to send in the clowns. And these are some times. Oh yes, we could use intelligent, serious people like Murrow and Cronkite reporting the news. But then, we need serious news, not birthers. And we must have a mainstream news media that doesn’t hate the very idea of discussing or reporting news and issues, as they do now.

(Link to Gene Lyons’ splendid eulogy of Cronkite added after originalposting.) ++

*****

No Apology Needed, President Obama, for Speaking Out on Gates
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, HuffPo
July 24, 2009

President Obama may have used the wrong words when he called the actions of the Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crawley, in cuffing Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, as “acting stupid.” He backed off slightly in a follow-up interview when he made it clear that he wasn’t indicting the entire Cambridge police department. By all accounts Crawley is a model cop, a stellar family man and he’s even hailed for his effort to train other cops not to racially profile. And certainly Gates’ arrest hardly fits the textbook definition of racial harassment, let alone profiling.

Yet, that doesn’t change the brutal reality that racial matters are still every bit as agonizing, contentious, and divisive as ever. In the past couple of weeks, black and Latino kids were booted from a pool in Philadelphia, black parents were fighting a dogged battle to save a black high school in Louisiana ordered shut down by a majority white school board, blacks and whites squared off in Paris, Texas when charges were dropped against two white men previously accused in the alleged dragging death of a young black man, Brandon McClelland, and a reinvigorated mass movement complete with a name — “the birthers” — to prove that President Obama is an illegal alien and should be dumped from the presidency. There’s also the rash of complaints and lawsuits alleging that several major lenders deliberately and systematically steered blacks and Latinos into extortionist interest rate, subprime loans.

Then there’s the Internet. Whether it’s the issue of Michael Jackson’s death or the relentless low intensity verbal broadsides aimed at Obama, legions of chat rooms and Web sites pulsate with unbounded hate chatter.

Obama’s knock at the police in Gate’s arrest, and his finger point at the overwhelming disproportionate number of unwarranted stops of blacks and Latinos by some in law enforcement, need no soft pedaling and certainly not an apology. Presidents are asked and offer their opinions, give their personal views, and even express their prejudices countless times in press interviews and in front of the White House press corps. Few dare demand that they apologize for a testy or intemperate quip. Bush certainly was never called on the carpet for his testosterone laced bring em’ on crack in reference to unnamed terrorists or his rough talk saber rattle against alleged “foreign enemies.”

It took just the right touch of passion and hint of anger that Obama brought to the table in the Gates affair to get the tongues wagging about race and policing, and how widespread racial profiling really is. Obama has the world’s most powerful and most watched bully pulpit to cajole, prod, and educate the public on compelling and even painful public policy issues; race being right at the top of the list. He should it use it every chance he gets, even if he’s just blowing off steam.

The perennial usual suspect Obama-foes called him irresponsible for weighing in on the racial profiling debate. It would have been even more irresponsible for Obama to fire back “no comment, next question” to the reporter’s demand for an opinion about Gates. A no comment or a waffling, duck and dodge pap remark to tough questions is not leadership or courage. No apology needed, President Obama for speaking out on Gates. ++

White Men Can’t Judge
Keith Boykin, HuffPo
July 24, 2009

The most disturbing aspect of the news coverage about Henry Louis Gates’ arrest has been the running commentary by white men about appropriate decorum for black men [...]

Tased and Confused
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo
07.23.09

TPM Reader CR with an important addition about the rise of tasers as a substitute for “self-defense training and lessons in conflict resolution” –

Thank you for printing CL’s commentary on the power of the local constabulary. I wholeheartedly agree. Unlike CL, very few of my clients have been people of color. I don’t practice in downtown NYC, I don’t have a storefront office right next to the local bail bondsman, and most of my practice is civil. Nevertheless, the generally petty ante stuff that I handle at the Municipal level often reeks with officers throwing the kitchen sink at my clients for nothing more than giving the ticketing, and subsequently arresting officer a sideways look [...]

*****

Jeff Sharlet talks about “The Family” on Rachel Maddow
YouTube

Rachel Maddow: “C” Street Curse?
VodPod

“C Street” Cabal of Anti-Democracy Fundamentalist Senators and Reps Wouldn’t Turn Over Child Rapist Among Them to Police?
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash
07/22/2009

Kudos to Rachel Maddow for latching on to the captivating and chilling story about not just the lascivious and potentially illegal activities of some of the “C Street” Family, but — more importantly — focusing on their belief that they are chosen by God to lead and infiltrate our governnment.

And she hasn’t stopped pursuing this startling story, defying the normal news cycle of a nano-second of coverage unless it’s Michael Jackson’s death or a blonde white girl disappearing in Aruba.

What gets lost in the disgusting details of Ensign’s adulterous affair, Mark Sanford’s (an associate member of the Family) lust for an Argentine, and former Congressman Chip Pickering’s adulterous bonking on-site at the C Street “Christian fellowship house” is something that Maddow has repeatedly come back to: these men don’t believe they are responsible to moral or governmental laws. If they deviate from the “righteous path,” God is only testing their strength, because they are the ones divinely chosen to lead — and it is weakness to succumb to remorse about one’s “misbehavior.” That is why Mark Sanford said he won’t resign and compared himself to King David, who slept adulterously with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed.

The low-key author, Jeff Sharlet, of “The Family:The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” is a credible chronicler of this cabal that is like a dagger in democracy. He writes:

Family leaders consider their political network to be Christ’s avant garde, an elite that transcends not just conventional morality but also earthly laws regulating lobbying. In the Family’s early days, they debated registering as “a lobby for God’s Kingdom.” Instead, founder Abraham Vereide decided that the group could be more effective by working personally with politicians. “The more invisible you can make your organization,” Vereide’s successor, current leader Doug Coe preaches, “the more influence you can have.” That’s true — which is why we have laws requiring lobbyists to identify themselves as such.

But David Coe, Doug Coe’s son and heir apparent, calls himself simply a friend to men such as John Ensign, whom he guided through the coverup of his affair. I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He’s a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was — or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate — he asked a young man who’d put himself, body and soul, under the Family’s authority, “Let’s say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?” The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. “No,” answered Coe, “I wouldn’t.” Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he’s among what Family leaders refer to as the “new chosen.” If you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.

Yes, you read that right, the son of Doug Coe, the “spiritual leader” of the Family and his heir apparent, would consider a Family member raping a child a test of the member’s choseness and to be resolved inside of the fellowship, without reporting it to the law authorities, it appears.

This is how dangerous they are. They apparently believe even child rape is something that God wants them to keep secret amongst themselves!

And the heroes held up for the Family are the likes of great tyrants as Sharlet writes:

If the Family men who stood over John Ensign as he wrote a baldly insincere breakup letter to his mistress were naive about hearts that want what they want, they don’t claim ignorance about the strongmen with whom they build bonds of prayer and foreign aid. They admire them. Counseling Rep. Tiahrt, Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ’s words, he says, “You know Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom.”

Sen. Ensign, facing calls for an investigation of what may have been felony abuses of campaign funds in his attempt to cover up his affair, might not get there. Then again, the Family’s preview of a “new kingdom” — a private club of men protecting one another’s secrets — doesn’t sound so different from the old kingdom. That’s the awful secret behind the closed doors of the C Street House, the Family’s authoritarian rhetoric, and even the Family’s real mission: business as usual, fortified by faith in more power for the powerful and privilege itself a form of piety.

The Family on C Street includes Dr. Tom “Execute Abortionists” Coburn who grilled Sonya Sotomayor during her Judiciary Committee hearings — and who counseled Ensign on his ongoing adulterous affair with a staffer who is the wife of another staffer.

These are dangerous men to the Republic. They think that they are members of some modern Skull and Bones of Sparta, selected by God to inflict a deranged “Christian” government upon the democracy of America — and for whom immorality and breaking the law are only acts in which God is testing them — and for which they hold no public responsiblity in their hearts and minds.

Keeping secret one of the members who might admit to child rape!

God help us all — but not their God, who is merely a monstrous, self-serving excuse in their own minds for evading the laws, ethics, and responsibilities of living a civilized and legal life. ++

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (July, 2009 Paperback Edition). Available for purchase here

“C Street House” Group Members Push Christian Nationalist House Resolution
Bruce Wilson, HuffPo
July 21, 2009

God is not your bitch
This just in: It is hugely unlikely God cares much about your sex life
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, July 24, 2009

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, still clinging to office after admitting to an extramarital affair, wrote in an opinion piece released Sunday that God will change him so he can emerge from the scandal a more humble and effective leader
– Associated Press

You know what God loves? Meddling. Meddling and poking and adjusting and maybe, just maybe, forgiving. Sometimes.

OK wait. What God really loves is meddling and poking and maybe forgiving, and also psychoanalyzing and scrutinizing and prying, gossiping and complaining and moderating, sighing and punishing and condemning, all while He shakes His big, shaggy head in your general direction at your various petty sins and misbehaviors every single day regarding pretty much every single thought you have.

Did you know this about God? Of course you did.

After all, if much of organized religion and nearly every conservative/fundamentalist adherent thereof are to be believed — and they most definitely are not — God is essentially the most obsessed, niggling micromanager of all time. He is all about being hugely, nay downright obscenely interested in the trivial minutiae of modern life, from the food eaten on a particular day to the touchdown made during the Big Game to the brand of TV you watch it on, right on over to what book you’re reading and where you live and if you have the right guns and foreign policy and facial hair, and of course whether or not you judge gay people and demean women and nonbelievers in just the right way.

Because only then, when all preposterous criteria are met, might God absolve you, or lead you toward happiness, or grant success to your new laundromat, or forgive you your trespasses and your recreational drug use and your pornographic thoughts about your massage therapist, or even how many soft, cooing sounds you made over the body of a sexy Argenitine female. Isn’t that right, Gov. Sanford?

Let us ponder. Because once again and for the billionth time, a deeply sad and hypocritical conservative is now claiming that he will be turning to God not merely for forgiveness for his lusty irresponsibilities, but he is also claiming that, in order to set things right, God will now be actively stepping into his life to help put him back on track, fix his mangled moral compass, tell him the what-what and the don’t-stick-that-there.

Isn’t that terrific? Isn’t it wondrous to hear that God cares so much, so specifically, for Gov. Mark Sanford? Is it not heartening to hear that God will now happily jump into the rather wretched role of Sanford’s own personal therapist, helping the wayward governor bury his heart and nix his one true love so he may return to his unhappy marriage and unhappy job and unhappy life? Yay God! So good of Him to take the time.

I, for one, am utterly delighted at how Sanford has effortlessly reduced the grand concept of timeless, universal divine metaconsciousness down to a bit of a tool, essentially making God his own personal knave. What a fantastic conceit! What glorious gall! We should all try that someday.

In fact, most major religions encourage exactly that. I find I am in a constant swoon of giddy amazement at this universal phenomenon, the fabulous, hubris-loaded idea that God is not actually an unfathomable river of cosmic energy to be supped from like liquid light, while you still take complete responsibility for your own life and choices. Nor is God simply the idea of universal love and compassion, coursing through all things at all times everywhere. How silly to think.

No, God is, apparently, actually far more like some sort of heavyset, hectoring grandmother who reads your email and pokes through your underwear drawer and hates your girlfriend and is, for the most part, very, very disappointed in you. Great!

Really, it almost does not matter in which God you believe, what sect or major denomination. Nearly all are of the same idea, offer up the same unquestionable truth: Of course God cares what you do, who you screw, upon which sliver of dust-choked holy land you live, how high you raise your flag and which statue you kneel before. This is the greatest wonder of all: In the impossible vastness of time and space, God cares most desperately, most fanatically about this particular swirling blue dot of inconsequential dust we call home. Hey, we invented God, right? We can do with Him whatever we want.

Now, you may say, if you have some broader understanding of matters religious and spiritual, that the point is not that God is literally a human-like micromanager — which is, obviously, a rather childish anthropomorphization of an abstract theological construct. Most Jews, for example, do not try to observe 10,000 impossible, arcane regulations and proscriptions and kosher Coca-Cola because they actually believe God will be furious if they go for the ham on rye on a Friday.

Rather, you can say most religious rules and rituals merely exist to reinforce commitment and membership in a given club, to give your ego some sort of reliable identity and shape, to bind the believer more devoutly to a given faith — and sometimes, if you’re lucky, deliver a lovely means to personal transformation. It’s easy to say that what most God-is-watching-you beliefs and behaviors do best is solidify our allegiance to whatever tribe we believe gives us our identity. It’s all merely a series of elaborate, profoundly felt secret handshakes. God could not really care less.

Put another way, the notion that this eternal divine consciousness, this grand and unquenchable, vibrating pulse of existence spanning all spheres and organisms and dimensions for all time everywhere, gives a flying communion wafer over the fact that you, say, enjoy sodomy on Sunday mornings? Well, that’s just all sorts of hilarious, dangerous reductivism. It is and has always been, throughout history, the most glorious conceit of man.

No matter. We do it anyway. Mark Sanford and his ilk will never cease in reducing divine consciousness into such shallow and sad dimensions, to serve their particular needs and egos and power struggles. Which is, perhaps, the greatest human tragedy of all.

Because really, we do the divine no favors by making it our bitch. We only keep God in this little box, taking him out when it suits us, our political goals or our need for redemption and meaning, and to assuage our ego’s trembling fears. You know, like a psychotherapist. Like a crutch. Like an excuse. Like a vibrator. Like milk. Like a gemstone. Like a flowerpot. Like a drug. Like a gun. ++

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
~ Barack Obama

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves