Republicans are making hay out of Obama’s 10-day vacation, of course. Saying he is the “Clark Griswold” president, a reference to National Lampoon’s Vacation movies, and that he doesn’t “deserve” a break. After all, after this vacation ends, Obama will have spent a total of eighty days on vacation so far! How lazy can you get?

Let’s see. At this point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan, also facing a long, worrying recession, was in the middle of a 17-day vacation, having spent a total of 77 days at his ranch alone, and a total of 110 days altogether, if you include Camp David and his 5-day vacation in Barbados.

At this point in his presidency, George H. W. Bush, immediately after Iraq invaded Kuwait and after he sent troops into the field, took off on a 4-week vacation at Kennebunkport, having racked up a total of 91 vacation days thus far.

And let’s not forget that at this point in his presidency, George W. Bush, as our troops were on the ground in Iraq, and as Bush was trying to gin up evidence and ramp up the call to start the ultimately disastrous Gulf War, took a full-month-long vacation, having racked up an impressive 225 total vacation days.

Of course, all opposition parties make political hay of the presidents’ vacation, and we all know that presidents work through these “days off.” It’s the image that makes for good political attack fodder.

The thing is, Obama has taken the least time off than any other president in recent history (not since that evil guy Carter took less time off during his campaign to destroy America), and the last president, a Republican, took so much time off that it makes Obama look like he has a pretty strong work ethic. As a result, Republicans are looking even more like hypocritical doofuses than they usually might.

So, having a mosque community center with an inter-faith chapel built by peaceful, anti-terror Sufi Muslims within a few blocks of Ground Zero is not OK, but having these establishments within a few blocks of the same site is just fine (several are NSFW):

Pussycat Lounge & Hamilton Room
A-1 Metro Parties
Adult New York Escorts
New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club
Male Strippers
Adult Models Dating and Escorts

I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few of those places started business after 9/11. I’m pretty certain that if another strip joint or escort service were to go up in the area, no one would object.

Glad we have our respectfulness for the sacred nature of the site in order.

Also, it was found last week that since 9/11, Muslim prayer sessions have been held regularly in an inter-faith chapel within the Pentagon.

Along the same lines of my comments of the repeal-the-Fourteenth-Amendment movement, whether or not you agree with the idea of Muslims of any stripe keeping a respectful distance, the fact remains that such feelings are not what this discussion is about. This is election-year politics. If the demagogues felt that the community center was not a good target and the strip clubs were, then it’d be all about the strip clubs. The public row is fueled not by indignation, but by stark, aggressive, uncaring opportunism.

Addenda: I forgot to mention that the Imam behind the NY project was tapped by Karen Hughes of the Bush administration for overseas tours representing a more moderate Islam. Also, Obama finally threw his hat in, probably now seeing the matter as being resolved enough for his comments to not inflame things and wants to help put the matter to rest.

This chart shows what is perhaps one of the most under-reported stories in D.C. today:

Remember when Democrats refused to confirm Bush’s most extreme judges, and right-wingers screamed about how the filibuster was unconstitutional, and all that crap? Yeah, I know, this is old news–the GOP is being hypocritical as hell, yet again. The filibuster was toxic and traitorous and so on, but now Republicans use it virtually all the time, breaking records year after year, so that now a 60-vote majority is virtually required for everything.

Republicans acted like confirming judicial nominees was even a more important matter, the courts were tied up and it’s the president’s right to get anyone he wants approved by the Senate, no matter what their politics, and (again) so on and so on… and now Republicans are blocking nominees like never seen before.

Right now, the Party of No is blocking pretty much anything coming down the pike–even a tax cut for small businesses, which Republicans claim is their forte, they voted against as a bloc. Health care for the heroes who worked at Ground Zero and now suffer? Screw them!

What excuses are given? The goddamned DemocRATs didn’t allow us to attach huge tax cuts to the rich and every other thing we ever wanted tacked on to these bills as amendments, they wanted to force us to vote on these issues up-or-down! After all those years WE were in power and let Democrats add as many amendm… uh, OK, well, we shut them down and treated them like they didn’t exist, but now they’re fascist bastards anyway!!!!

Stuff like this, in addition to the we-love-fat-cat-bankers, the we-love-BP, we want to give Paris Hilton billions but the jobless are lazy and don’t deserve relief, and the fact that the GOP is going even more extreme as time goes on… even with people hating incumbents this year, it is still astonishing that people cannot see who is causing the damage.

You want Congress to do something about jobs? If Republicans get more than 40 in the Senate (they won’t retake the majority, that’s for sure), then you can bet that the near-total filibuster marathon will become an all-out standstill, or worse, Democrats will start to cave and things will start to roll back to the Bush years.

They have made it clear: as long as the Democrats hold the White House and a majority, they are determined to grind D.C. to a halt and make the country fail.

What really astonishes me: the Democrats and left-leaning independents don’t see this as a clarion call to march to the polls in droves. The Stimulus, Health Care, the auto industry revived and profitable, Wall Street reform, credit card reform… all despite near-monolithic opposition from the GOP, the Democrats have managed to get through as much big-ticket legislation in two years and others get through in four or eight. If you’re a liberal, it would be hard to claim that they haven’t accomplished anything, or as much as they could have. But if you fail to get out the vote, you’ll see either nothing or a hard, sharp turn to the right.

The alternative, should the Left fail to do the right thing: Democrats scrap the filibuster. In hindsight, they clearly should have taken the GOP up on this when the “Nuclear Option” was being threatened a few years back–it would have made no difference then, but a huge difference over the past two years. And if the Democrats do toss out the filibuster, and hang on to a majority in the House and a 4- or 5-vote margin in the Senate, with the filibuster gone they could accomplish even more.

And the Republicans could not even criticize the Democrats, because they themselves vilified the procedure and came up with the whole idea of killing it off, so they would have to be silent.

Ha! Gotcha! Of course they’d be hypocritical and blast the Dems. But the Dems should have the guts to ignore them and push ahead.

A few days ago, I posted about the “mosque” being built “at” Ground Zero–actually, it’s a community center, and there’s a multi-faith chapel and prayer area, not a mosque, and it’s not on the WTC site, but rather two or three blocks away… but hey, when it’s an election year and you’re trying to make people mad, these things don’t matter. What’s more, as came out in the discussion, the group that wants to put up the center is one that has condemned the 9/11 attack and terrorism in general “in the most unequivocal terms,” and plans a memorial for the 9/11 victims in the center. The Imam heading the initiative, a Sufi Muslim, has worked together with Israelis to promote peace between the nations, and has jointly proclaimed with them for both Palestinians and Jews “to live with freedom, security, dignity, respect, and self-determination.” So this is no radical organization, not a group raising funds for terrorists or smearing Jews, but a progressive, peaceful organization trying to mend relations, build awareness, and bring Muslims and others to a reasonable, respectful, and peaceful place.

And yet, look at what controversy has been brought. Now, this probably would not have been such a big deal were it not for people like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich seeing a fantastic red-herring issue intended not to legitimately address grievances or to right wrongs, but instead to inflame (and defame) so as to rally political strength to their campaigns. Without the politicians using this as a prop to get media attention, there would have been a few protests from the families of the 9/11 victims, a few people from the community raising a fuss, but it would have stopped there, the protests drowned out by others pointing out that the group is far from objectionable, the project is positive and constructive by nature, and religious freedoms should be observed and no one group be unfairly maligned or hindered.

But this is a critical election year, and the temptation of making hay by distorting the facts and playing on people’s fears and indignation is just too great.

One interesting perspective is to imagine it having happened a different way: what if Obama himself had announced support for this project? As far as I can tell, he’s stayed a mile away from the issue, and for good reason: the right-wing has made the “Obama is a Muslim who wants to attack Christianity and destroy America” one of its prominent memes; Obama announcing public support for the center near Ground Zero would be like Christmas and Easter wrapped up in an orgasm for these people.

Imagine what the reaction would be if, now that Obama is president, the Pentagon started building Islamic prayer centers just like the one that they’re proposing near Ground Zero? The Pentagon, itself a victim of 9/11! Forced to build mosques!! Whoo boy! That would set off a firestorm of protest! There would be no end to the indignation, the claims that Obama is anti-Christian, the calls for impeachment, cries that anyone who would be insensitive and anti-American enough to build mosques at U.S. military installations must be a traitor of the worst stripe!!! The media would jump right on the bandwagon, “reasonably” asking questions like, “Is it really appropriate for the president to do something like this? Is he not sensitive to the feelings of the families of the victims as well as Americans everywhere? Should we be spreading Islamic fervor within the ranks of our own military?”

What if, on top of that, President Barack Hussein Obama hosted an Iftar, and Muslim celebration of Ramadan, within the White House itself? Everyone would go insane!!!

Well, if you know me, then you can probably see where I’m going with this. In 2006, five years after 9/11, The Pentagon started building Islamic prayer rooms. A few right-wing bloggers got their panties in a bunch, but no one else much minded or even noticed. And Bush hosted Iftars more than once. Bush was not branded a traitor, no brouhaha, the world didn’t end.

What this shows is that this is mostly about politics, mostly about smears and attacks and defamation and using our emotions, our fears and sensitivities against what is reasonable and for what is wrong with politics today.

One last thought: Jonathan Chait at The New Republic makes an interesting point: did you feel that it was proper to allow Salman Rushdie to publish The Satanic Verses, or for a Danish newspaper to publish a cartoon of Muhammad? You see the relation to this–freedoms of religion, action, and speech versus the sensitivities of those who may be offended.

Newt Gingrich:

You know, there are over a hundred mosques in New York City. I favor religious freedom. I’m quite happy if they’d come in and said, ‘We want to build a community center near Central Park, we’d like to build a community center near Columbia University.’ But they didn’t. They said right at the edge of a place where, let’s be clear, thousands of Americans were killed in an attack by radical Islamists.

By that logic, since the 9/11 terrorist were Middle Eastern, we should be blocking anyone of Middle East descent from (a) purchasing property, (b) running a business, or (c) taking up residence anywhere near Ground Zero. For example, any Saudi business that wants to rent offices within, say, ten city blocks should be denied permission.

Unless I misunderstand Newt–we’re talking about guilt by association, right? We’re essentially saying that since radical Islamists were responsible for 9/11, that means all Muslims are to be banned from setting up shop near Ground Zero. Since it’s not about religion, we must also take into account whatever attributes were involved–and national origin is certainly involved, at least as much as religion.

And hey, the terrorists were all men!

Or how about Timothy McVeigh being a registered Republican; should we have banned the GOP from setting up any party offices within a mile of the Oklahoma City National Memorial? You paint with a broad brush, you cover a lot of territory.

This whole thing is idiotic and bigoted, an appeal to the lowest common denominator for the most base and shameful of reasons. Now, if radical Islamists, maybe some Shariah Law school run by people of the exact same stripe of the terrorists, or a mosque dedicated to the terrorists–you know, someone actually in any way associated or identifying with the terrorists–if they wanted to set up business nearby, then maybe Newt’s got a point.

Now, if someone wanted to take the community center to task on specific grounds, such as objections to the Imam responsible for the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, that’s different; you can cite specific reasons and call specific sensitivities into question. For example, Rauf said things after 9/11 such as, “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.” Or, “… we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” Now, he also said other things like “Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam,” and “I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy.” These are items we could debate on their merits. We could have a conversation about whether it is agreeable to allow or not allow an organization run by a person like this to set up shop near Ground Zero–either in terms of sensitivity or whether it is even legal to stop it. We could discuss the ins and outs, the conflicts and the perceptions, and so forth.

But to say, “Hey, these guys are Muslims, the terrorists were Muslims, all Muslims banned from the area” is pretty much the definitive example of sweeping religious stereotyping and discrimination.

But then again, this is an election year.

Stay classy, Newt.

That’s the headline:

GOP: No more help for jobless, but rich must keep tax cuts

WASHINGTON — Republicans almost unanimously oppose spending $33.9 billion for extended unemployment benefits for some 2.5 million people who’ve lost them, because they say it would increase federal budget deficits.

At the same time, they’re pushing a permanent extension of Bush administration tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, which could increase federal budget deficits by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years.

How do they justify this?

Good question. The answer: Darwinian philosophy thinly disguising a well-known bias for rich people. Poor people vote Democratic; you don’t want to give money to those people. Besides, they lost their jobs, and conservative economic philosophy says that losers don’t deserve pity or help–that’s socialist entitlement bullcrap. Rich people, on the other hand, deserve to keep the money they’ve earned–because they’re so good at investing it in stuff like making businesses that employ those jobless people (and, um, they make sizable campaign contributions, ahem).

Forget that the economic engine is driven primarily from money spent by people just like the ones who are jobless, while more money for the rich is what causes the economy to stall. Rich people can be as rich as you can make them, but none will invest in new businesses if the common folk don’t have any money to spend.

And that thing about paying for stuff and how deficits will destroy us? That just applies to Democrats, you silly. Haven’t you been paying attention?

Here’s an excellent example at political game-playing versus a journalist who got fed up with being lied to. Mark Haines of CNBC got into a scrap with a guy named Hans Bader, a counsel to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank opposed to corporate regulation.

Bader was coming on the air to try for the umpteenth time to resuscitate the old “Jones Act” non-fiasco, claiming that the Obama administration has been sucking up to unions by refusing to waive the Jones Act, which prohibits foreign-flag vessels from taking part in port-to-port trade between U.S. ports. The claim has been that Obama has sacrificed the environment to help the unions–as if the right wing really gave a crap about the environment. What they really want is to (a) break down union standing, and (b) bash Obama with something, anything that they feel can stain him.

Bader claimed that there were a number of cases where the Jones Act prohibited foreign vessels from assisting the clean-up in the gulf, and gave two examples. The first was the Dutch offer, which Bader used to say was the “Irish need not apply” standard which theoretically scared off scores of other offers which were, as a result, never made, or so Bader claimed.

Haines blew that claim to pieces the next day, having researched it and found that the Dutch offer was made in anticipation of a leak being found, but the offer was turned down because the leak had not been found yet, nor its scope understood. Yes, the administration took too long to anticipate the scope, and yes, the EPA’s strict regulations (the Dutch equipment wasn’t good enough to meet normal standards, but would have been far better than not using anything at all) stood inanely in the way of using of the Dutch equipment for several days. But after the scope of the emergency was understood, the Obama administration returned to the Dutch and accepted the offer. The Dutch equipment is now in use–and the Jones Act was never an issue in this case.

As such, it could never act to discourage foreign assistance. Nor was it widely publicized or well-known before just now, and so would not have acted as a deterrent anyway, thus demolishing Bader’s secondary point that there are countless imaginary offers that would have been made had not Obama so thoroughly discouraged them.

The second example Bader brought up was a vague mention of a “foreign deck barge” that was reported in the publication Human Events–a right-wing publication. No details are given of which country offered it, what use it could be, or anything else. I have found no corroboration of this claim anywhere, and so like the Dutch report, if this is not completely fabricated or taken wholly out of context, it is likely irrelevant–for example, in that same report, the explanation was given that the deck barge’s purpose was served by a U.S. deck barge and therefore was not needed. If true, then there is no purpose for the Jones Act to be waived in such a case–unless the right wing now favors using foreign equipment while US equipment lays idle. In any case, the right-wing complaint about the Jones Act does not even apply.

Bader published a defense of his case, but danced around the fact that he was simply wrong. He excused himself in the case of the Dutch offer simply because he found it reported in the Voice of America, as if he could not be held responsible for checking his facts. Nor does he provide any corroboration for the second example beyond a vague report in a clearly biased magazine. He even used his tiredness to somehow excuse the case he made, or how he made it. But none of that can defend the fact that he was dead wrong.

Bader even quoted the text of the Jones Act to suggest that it can be used to prevent foreign offers of help–and yet completely ignores the text in the Jones Act which clearly exempts cases of assistance in oil spills!!

Haines is clearly a bit too upset–but if my job was to hear lying talking heads spout this crap every day, I’d be likely to fly off the handle now and then myself. Haines does make a flub, claiming that Bader could not name one–he did, and although it was later proved false, Haines did not know that for certain. Also, I think Haines went a bit over the top calling Bader “Senator McCarthy”–but again, in light of the fact that he knew he was being lied to, and considering the manner of the lie, I can’t fault him much for that.

Seeing a version of this Jefferson quote in Sullivan’s blog, I was moved to find the full text. This bit, on British hostility via their newspapers, resonates not a little with the operations of Fox News, quite functionally the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, after the loss of both Congress and the White House as a result of Republicans driving things into the ground–in effect, their own “loss of America” that somehow had to be justified.

The British government as you may naturally suppose have it much at heart to reconcile their nation to the loss of America. This is essential to the repose, perhaps even to the safety of the King & his ministers. The most effectual engines for this purpose are the public papers. You know well that that government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

Some things do not change.

One of the talking points I’ve often heard from the right wing about the sub-prime crisis is the idea that it’s the fault of liberals and minorities: liberals for passing legislation that forced banks to take on bad loans, and minorities for eagerly buying into loans they should have known they could not pay for. The contention is that liberals, in their blind, unthinking ways, wanted more minorities to have homes, and minorities, being grabby and not too bright, overreached and precipitated the crisis. This ties up the scandal into a nice, neat, right-wing trifecta: you get to move conservatives and their still-favored deregulatory practices out of the picture, make the bankers into unwilling participants and even victims, and heap blame and scorn upon lefties and the lower-class dark-skinned people you look down upon so much. Bush, the Republicans, the deregulation they passed, and the banking industry are all innocent; stupid liberals and minorities are to blame. Of course, these charges are demonstrably false, but that doesn’t stop the meme from becoming firmly established on the right wing.

Nor is this hardly anything new. Remember how, when Hurricane Katrina hit, the fact that Bush dawdled for five days and completely blew relief efforts was handled the exact same way: it was, the right wing claimed, the fault of (1) local Democrats (specifically Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin) for not declaring a state of emergency (Blanco did) or using local buses to move people (Nagin did), and (2) the minority-rich population of New orleans for being too stupid to leave before the storm. Thus, the claims went, Bush, who reportedly begged Blanco and Nagin to declare the emergency (he didn’t, it was the other way around), was not to blame for the disaster that ensued. For weeks afterward, the right wing distributed false and misleading email messages which heaped despicable abuse and outright racist slander which was designed to vilify the people of New Orleans and thus make people less inclined to care about Bush’s ineptitude in helping them.

But this is the pattern: blame liberals and minorities. Immigration? The left loves minorities so they go soft on immigrants and immigration offenses while the dirty Mexicans walk all over us! (Pay no attention to the fact that corporate America is the actual villain here.) Elections won by Democrats? The liberals were guilty of election fraud, assisted by minorities within ACORN! (Pay no attention to the fact that ACORN was slandered, there is very little election fraud, and what there is is more right-wing than left.) Where only one or the other can be attached to a scandal by any stretch of the imagination, then only one is implicated–but whatever the problem, it’s always Democrats and minorities somewhere who are supposed to be behind it all.

Liz Cheney tries to revive the 1990’s mindset where every single imagined impropriety, no matter how frivolous or unsupported, merited an independent prosecutor:

Look, I think there are some things that clearly rise to the level of needing independent investigation. And what you have had happen here, obviously is the White House put out a statement the Friday before Memorial Day announcing Bill Clinton was involved, which I’m sure was really not that reassuring to most Americans. There is not an impeccable record of integrity there on the part of the former president. Secondly, then you have Rahm Emanuel basically have his own lawyer, the White House counsel issue a statement saying ‘Hey, this is all fine, we’re good to go,’ with no analysis whatsoever. Clearly, you need somebody to come in and take a look at exactly what happened.

Hey, Clinton himself was involved–that’s reason enough for an investigator right there!

What Cheney is talking about is the fact that the Obama administration offered Joe Sestak a White House position in exchange for him not running against Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. Scandal!! Lawbreaking!! Why, no one has done that, except for perhaps every other single president in U.S. history!!

It’s not surprising that wingnuts want to smear Obama with something, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of their choice of vehicles. The offer Obama made is the same kind of political horse-trading that goes on every day in Washington, and is not even considered unethical by the more conspiratorially-minded. Even the Bush administration ethics lawyer said there’s no “there” there.

But Cheney seems to think that by singling out Clinton as a “cut out,” she can get an actual investigation started:

There is a lot here that just smells funny. If the White House thought what they were doing above board why did they go to Bill Clinton? Why did they need a cut-out for whatever they were doing? I want to know what he offered. I want to know what the president knew. The president said he didn’t know. I find it really hard to believe that the chief of staff would go to the former president to get him to try and get somebody out of the race without telling the president. And finally, this is very reminiscent of the campaign finance scandals back in the mid-’90s when they were selling the Lincoln bedroom. So I think the American people have a right to know here. We have Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel back engaged in this exactly what happened? Were any laws broken? Was an offer made?

Yes. Let’s not even think of investigating the massive, illegal warrantless wiretapping, or the near-infinite graft during the Iraq War in which billions simply vanished; let’s not have an investigator looking into Halliburton or the no-bid contracts, or the collusive policy-writing by oil company executives. And it’s traitorous to ask for an investigation of torture, or of the abandonment of national security leading up to 9/11.

No, let’s start a huge investigation because of an unsuccessful attempt at mundane, garden-variety political deals which cost nothing, harmed no one, and which happen all the time and nobody gives a rat’s ass about.

Ironically, if anything, Cheney’s blathering actually validates Obama’s ethics: if this is the worst someone like her can think of to charge Obama with, he must be pretty damned squeaky clean.

You can almost smell the desperation among the right wing to smear Obama in any way they can, using the time-honored political strategy of throwing as much mud as they can at him until something sticks. But in their method they betray their shallow, self-contradictory nature. Obama is a socialist, they tell us. He’s a communist. And he’s a fascist. Which is kind of like trying to say that he’s a Democrat, a Libertarian, and a Republican–they don’t mix.

In the BP oil spill disaster, the right wing sees a glimmer of hope, in that there’s a terrible incident that covers a span of time, so of course it can be blamed on Obama. At first, they saw an environmental disaster hitting the Gulf region, and naturally glommed onto the idea that this was “Obama’s Katrina.” However, the meme didn’t catch on; whereas Bush was immobile and inept, Obama is merely unsuccessful. Hurricanes are something that the US government is expected to act on promptly and with vigor; oil spills, not so much. The government’s handling of Katrina was hampered by stagnation, corruption and cronyism within the bureaucracy which Bush was responsible for; the government’s responsibility for the BP oil spill also harkens back to corruption–but not Obama’s, as Bush was the one who deregulated the industry to allow this to happen. With Katrina, Bush delayed ending a vacation, and dallied for five days before ordering in the national guard while people starved, were abandoned, and died; Obama has been doing about all that a president can for such a crisis–that it is taking so long is not a matter of incompetence, but rather the difficulty involved. It took ten months to stop a similar–but less disastrous–oil spill in the Gulf back in 1979. Had Obama’s direction been able to cap this leak after just one and a half months, it would have been miraculous, not a failure.

So the “Obama’s Katrina” story didn’t work–but the right-wingers felt they could tack this on Obama if only they had the right slogan. So in came “Obama’s 9/11.” Forget that this claim betrays the idea that 9/11 was a failure on the part of the government to respond well to a severe crisis, something right-wingers insist was not the case. And forget that the right wing tried to say that the economic crisis was “Obama’s 9/11,” or that the New York Times Square bomber incident was “Obama’s 9/11,” just like Haiti was supposed to be “Obama’s Katrina” before the oil spill was. One reason they fail is because they just don’t resonate: the oil spill is a terrible disaster, but not a political scandal. Who associates Bush 41 with the Exxon Valdez? Nobody–they associate Exxon with the Exxon Valdez. Fact is, the public doesn’t blame presidents for oil spills.

So the 9/11 meme didn’t gain any traction–the comparison was kind of silly, and right-wingers may not have liked the inference that 9/11 was a failure that could be blamed on the previous administration.

In fact, right-wingers may have started to become aware of how revealing it was that they were constantly trying to assign Bush scandals to Obama–Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s 9/11, Obama’s Enron, Obama’s Harriet Miers, Obama’s “Mission Accomplished,” Obama’s Iraq War, and so on. It highlighted the fact that the Bush administration was hip-deep in scandals, validated the idea that Bush’s scandals were indeed his fault, and came across as a desperate ploy to “hand off” the scandals to a Democratic administration in the hopes that Bush would no longer look so bad.

As a result, we are now seeing a different approach: The BP oil spill, we are now being told, is “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis.” The parallel is supposed to be that this is a long-drawn out crisis which will kill the president’s chances of re-election.

Yeah, good luck on that one. When it fails, what next? Obama’s Vietnam? Obama’s Great Depression? Obama’s Appomattox? Obama’s Boston Massacre? It could be months before the spill is finally plugged; the right wing will have the chance to try out a variety before the well runs dry.

Can’t wait to hear the next meme.

During the 2008 election, Obama used an iPhone app to help spread his message, raise money, and generally help win him the election, as part of a much broader Internet campaign strategy. Since then, many politicians and parties have published their own apps on the App Store, left- and right-wing alike.

Ari David, the Republican challenger to Henry Waxman in California’s 30th District (Malibu, Beverly Hills, & Santa Monica), is trying to win himself some free publicity by violating Apple’s App Store policy and then crying over how he’s being denied “free speech.”

Apple’s policy on this is:

3.3.12 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.

One may presume that Apple would rather avoid being held culpable in libel suits, or perhaps, in the same vein as keeping porn off its mobile devices, just wants as nice and calm a playground as they can manage. There is nothing at all keeping David or anyone else from publishing positive statements about their own records, but when you start smearing an opponent, Apple steps in and tells you to take it elsewhere.

Waxman claims that Apple singled out specific statements as being defamatory, and lists them. Included in the listing are allegations that Waxman “would have brought us $7 a gallon gas and … would make electricity rates ‘necessarily sky rocket.’” … “would severely hurt seniors” … “jeopardized the US and Israel” … and “TRIED TO STRANGLE family farms with insane Soviet-Style regulation.”

Yeah, that’s not defamatory.

Now, we can debate whether Apple can and/or should have such a policy, but one thing here is pretty clear: David is just using this as political fuel. Sure, maybe he was just clueless and figured that a vehement attack app would get approved. But I think it is much more likely that the entire app idea itself is a ploy to get free publicity, and make David out to be that favorite of favorites for right-wingers: the victim.

Here’s how I see it happening. At a session among his staff to see how they can get some good, free press, someone brings up the App Store policy. Political cartoonist Mark Fiore had his political cartoon app initially denied under the same policy, but after a good deal of controversy, Apple reversed itself and let it go through. Apple has a history of relenting when put under pressure. So somebody on David’s strategy team gets the idea of making an iPhone app intentionally designed to trigger the policy–enough so that it gets stopped, but not enough to look completely outrageous. When Apple inevitably rejects the app, David’s campaign goes all over the media shouting about how Apple is censoring their speech and denying them their First Amendment rights.

Right there, they have a winner: they (1) get free publicity, (2) get to play the victim, and (3) get their attacks printed free. There is zero chance that no one will listen to a story like that–at the very least, Fox will cover it, and likely other networks will follow. It’s sure to get on the local news. David’s campaign can’t lose.

They add another dimension, though: they insinuate that Apple is secretly a liberal bastion which allows Democrats to bash Republicans, but not the other way around. They try to build up an image of Apple as being populated with liberal elitists working for Democrats:

… Apple is now making an in-kind contribution to Henry Waxman by denying his competitor a modern tool for political communication. They are stifling my right to free political speech and they are carrying water for the Obama administration … Apple pulled all of their advertising from the Fox News channel … Clearly people who work at Apple are likely to be the kind of creative people who may tend to vote Democrat and hold liberal views, but this goes far beyond that. This experience with Apple clearly shows that there is a political agenda going on within the culture of the company, and business decisions are subject to Apple’s political views. … it would be interesting to see what iPhone apps Apple has approved for Democrats in which negative statements about Republicans are made, and what standard Apple has held those statements to before approval.

Never mind that Apple would reject any app with attacks like this integrated into it, Democratic or Republican. Never mind that Apple pulled its ads from Fox because Glenn Beck told people not to go to church if they heard certain words spoken there–as did dozens of other advertisers. (I guess that Geico, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Bank of America, General Mills, Mercedes Benz, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagon, UPS, and Radio Shack are also in on the conspiracy.) No, forget that the claims are specious and self-serving.

This goes hand-in-hand with playing the victim card–you get double the juice if you can show that you are being crushed under the heel of liberals, with Apple being transmogrified into a Silicon Valley version of the Liberal Media™.

Beyond the hopes that this story catches fire, David’s campaign undoubtedly hopes to get Apple to eventually succumb to pressure. The MSM usually caves in almost immediately when charged with being liberal, and since Apple is known to not act on such rejections until a lot of pressure is applied, the David campaign is probably hoping for the story to be out there long enough to be milked–and then the icing on the cake would be for Apple to cave and allow the app. David is trying to compound that win for himself by asserting that all of his statements are “factual” and therefore not defamatory, presumably so that if Apple succumbs to pressure and allows his app, it will appear like Apple is admitting that his statements are factual.

As for David’s final swipe that Apple probably lets Dems bash GOPers while denying right-wingers the same freedom, just do a search for “GOP,” “liberal”, “conservative,” etc. on the iPhone App Store and you’ll see that this is a baseless charge. There are a lot more right-wing apps than left-wing ones, and a lot of the right-wing ones tend to get pretty nasty–though they do not defame specific individuals within the integrated app data, the act which runs afoul of Apple’s policy.

Interestingly, try to search for “Republican” and you get a hundred apps (the limit for a search), most of them being pro-right and/or anti-left; search for “Democratic” and you get 14 apps, only a few left-wing; a search for “Democrat” scores more–88 apps–but not many are left-wing apps.

I found a few Democratic congressional campaign apps, but they were completely inoffensive. Mike Oliverio’s (D-WV) app is just a poster showing a debt clock and a link to his site. Alan Mollohan’s (also D-WV) app includes a calendar of events and a bio, but is just as inoffensive. Felton Newell has a much more sophisticated app helping him run for CA-33, a Democratic safe seat, and that app also is positive only.

Republican Chris Cox, trying out for New York’s 1st District, is a Republican; his app allows you to read a short bio, donate to his campaign, and has a little game where you catch money “leaking out of the White House”–not really hardball, but it is a negative swipe at Obama rather than a positive statement about himself. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) has an app with news and pages for volunteering and contributing (though she recently announced that she’s retiring). And Bob Latta (R-OH) has an app with mostly just links and contacts–but also a News section, in which he–guess what–attacks Democrats, accusing them of various evil-sounding misdeeds.

Those were the first three Democratic and Republican politicians I found with iPhone apps–all Dems were only positive, two of the Republicans were critical of Democrats. So much for Apple as a liberal wing of the Democratic party stifling Republicans while allow Democrats to savage right-wingers without restraint. (In fact, Al Ramirez, a Republican running for Senate in California, has his own app–and he set up residency in Ari David’s district to run for office.)

But here’s the real tell concerning Ari David: you can get political attacks into your iPhone app. Just either make the attacks general (against a party, for example), or include a News section which you can later fill with feeds of political attacks. Either that, or build a web app for the iPhone, which is not subject to Apple’s approval.

In short, David’s insinuations about Apple are patently false, right-wingers seem to be more numerous and negative in their political apps, and David could have easily have made an app which allowed him to smear Democrats and probably even Waxman–but he was either stupid, or more likely, geared his app with the intention of getting it rejected.

Again, we can debate whether Apple should have this policy at all–but whatever the outcome of that argument, Ari David is probably just another whining, conniving smear artist hoping to get his fifteen minutes.

Democrats are currently crowing about a major victory in the Senate right now, as Republicans folded under pressure and gave up on their obstructionist attempt to weaken or kill the financial reform legislation before debate even started.

On the other hand, the Democratic “victory” was that with a 59-41 majority, Democrats, after several days, were finally able to open debate on a bill that must later go through several other steps before passing.

One way of looking at it says that Democrats have done the equivalent of tying their shoelaces correctly. Hardly impressive. Another way of looking at it, though, is that they have successfully tied their shoelaces while a bunch of people make a concerted effort to keep them from doing it. Imagine trying to lace your shoes with three or four people constantly yanking at your hands and feet, trying to stop you. I think you’d be impressed by anyone who get their shoes tied under such conditions.

But in a political sense, the achievement or lack of same is less important than the fact that both sides had resolved, and one side caved. If Obama was trying to pass a law for “National Shoelace Day” but Republicans thwarted him, the relative importance of the law would be of little importance, as the main focus would be who has got stronger political will.

So, for the time being, at least, Democrats are doing pretty well, keeping a fairly good image ever since the passage of the health care law. And it doesn’t help the Republicans that they are making their stand for the banking industry, which everyone now detests, trying to thwart reform which will help keep another bailout from happening. That’s not a very defensible stance, which is most likely why they folded–along with the fact that they were preventing even debating the legislation. If Dems can similarly succeed in blasting the Republicans as being pro-bank and anti-reform when cloture and passage come to pass, it would be an even bigger win. Republicans are also not helped by right-wingers pulling crap like the immigration law in Arizona and the Nevada Republican seriously advocating livestock payments for health care.

Of course, one can always count on Republicans to provide a steady stream of idiots to do stupid stuff like that. The real question is, how long can the Dems keep this up without reverting to weak-kneed giga-wimp form?

Come on, Obama… “Women’s rights” is a litmus test. Every president has litmus tests. It was even more stupid when Bush tried to claim he didn’t have litmus tests but required his justices to be strict constructionists (the ultimate mega-bundle mother of all litmus tests), but it’s not much less stupid when you try to claim you don’t have any yourself. Politically expedient, maybe–but you’re not fooling anyone.

Obama went to the Republicans’ home turf and fielded unscreened questions from House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore. Below is the full White House video (video and transcripts part one & part two) of his opening remarks and of his one hour and seven minutes of answering questions lobbed at him by his political opponents.

Now, one thing I would like to observe: when did Bush do this? Right-wingers make claims that Obama and Democrats are “afraid” of “journalists,” meaning they won’t allow Fox News to stage a right-wing political ambush under the pretense of a debate hosted by a “news outlet.”

The thing is, Obama has put himself not just up in front of the media, he has put himself directly in front of very aggressively challenging right-wing forums. Obama went on O’Reilly’s show on Fox; did Bush ever go on Olbermann? Hell, no. Now, maybe I missed something, but I sure as hell don’t recall Bush ever opening himself up to answering more than an hour’s worth of unscreened questions from Democratic lawmakers on live TV. No, I think I would have remembered that.

So, right off the bat, you have to give Obama huge props for going where no Republican leader would ever have the guts to go, namely into the lion’s den of opposition. On this, Obama is the courageous, bipartisan leader, and Republicans are the weak-kneed sissies afraid to be held accountable by the opposition. There can be no argument on that.

Next, watching the opening remarks and much of the questioning, you have to give Obama big marks for bipartisan outreach. He made several excellent points about how he has compromised and worked across the aisle, gave Republicans their due on many things, and publicly committed to working with the other side. Compare that to most of the questions, and you’ll see that while the Republicans in the room had some conciliatory remarks, they most definitely were way more partisan in their remarks than Obama was. Clearly, they felt that Obama had stumbled into their crosshairs and they were going to make a shooting gallery of it. But under the most challenging of questions, Obama more than held his own. He did not allow his record to be misrepresented, and did a good job of beating down the untrue accusations lobbed at him.

And there were quite a few incredibly biased and unfair “questions” (often couched in partisan speechmaking–just listen to the first “question”). I nearly gagged when one guy actually had the balls to say “We have not been obstructionist.” I had to remember that a few moments before, he had said that he represented freshmen in the House. I don’t know what their record is, but maybe among that small group, there has not been the same level of obstructionism as has been iron-clad amongst Republicans as a whole, and especially Senate Republicans. What this guy said may have been true in its very limited sense, but coming from a Republican lawmaker, and clearly intended to represent Republicans in general (note how he did not say “House freshmen have not been obstructionist,” but instead removed the classification to a preceding sentence therefore giving a false impression in the claim), it is one of the more outrageous claims ever spoken. And sure, freshmen House Republicans may not be as obstructionist as their party as a whole, but that’s because they can afford to be: there’s no filibuster in the House, and the Democrats have a clear majority, so 100% opposition is not necessary, and they can afford to cross lines more often. But if Democrats held a razor-thin majority, you can bet your ass that these guys would be exactly as obstructionist as their Senate brethren are.

Obama scored huge points in pointing out how Republicans have demonized Obama:

Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker, and, certainly you don’t agree with Tom Daschle on much, but that’s not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys — (applause) — that’s how you guys presented it.

And so I’m thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist — no, look, I mean, I’m just saying, I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans — is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.

So all I’m saying is, we’ve got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.

And I would just say that we have to think about tone. It’s not just on your side, by the way — it’s on our side, as well. This is part of what’s happened in our politics, where we demonize the other side so much that when it comes to actually getting things done, it becomes tough to do.

Truer words have not been spoken. Watch the whole video, and I think you’ll be impressed with how Obama does. I have to say, he is very motivational; listening to him speak, especially seeing him stand up to and hold his own and then some against a crowd so pitted against him almost gives me hope again. But then I remember that it’s not House Republicans who are the problem, it’s Senate Republicans, and for all the tiny morsels of outreach the crowd claimed they were offering, none of that means squat if Senate Republicans don’t end their record-breaking filibuster marathon and stop their monolithic obstructionist campaign.

UPDATE: Amusing point: Obama was doing so good a job at defeating Republican attempts to make him look bad, and doing it so adroitly and effectively, that Fox News, which was airing the event no doubt in hopes that Obama would get his ass handed to him, cut away from the event 20 minutes early. To those who would claim that they planned to or had to go to another event, I ask this: if Obama were getting embarrassed instead of the other way around, do you think they would have cut away? Not to mention that they cut away to “analysis” of the event, and spent a lot of time bitching about how Obama was “lecturing” Republicans. Um, yeah.

All indications now seem to point to Republicans picking up at least 4 or 5 Senate seats and who knows how many House seats come the midterm elections.

Let me see if I understand the causal chain correctly:

1. Republicans spent the last eight years in power trashing the economy, starting quagmire wars, and generally mismanaging things so badly that most people agreed they sucked
2. Obama elected because people want change
3. Obama and Democrats get to work addressing major problems: economy, health care, etc.; early results were startlingly good as stimulus sharply reversed job losses, and large majority wanted some form of health care reform
4. Republicans throw biggest hissy fit in memory, rage with over-the-top histrionics, throwing about outrageously obvious lies like “Obama’s creating death panels to kill your grandparents”
5. Republicans throw 100% of their weight in obstructionist effort to grind business to a halt for the openly stated reason of wanting the president to fail so they can gain politically from it
6. People respond by thinking Obama is doing a bad job and reward Republicans with election victories and more power

Whatever low opinion I had of Joe Voter just dropped through the floor. I know that the Dems have been more than a bit weak-kneed and ineffective in doing what they’re doing, but at least they were intent on doing well for the country, and no matter how bad they may have been, they are far more preferable than what the Republicans have to offer. It’s as if the people have completely forgotten about what happened the past ten years, and like gullible saps, are willing to believe just about anything the right-wing propaganda machine feeds them. I mean, really, does anyone believe that giving Republicans more power will result in more action being taken? Exactly the opposite: get ready for Obstructionism on Steroids as the GOP sets its sights on taking the White House in 2012.

If Americans are so astonishingly stupid as a group, then I suppose we get what we deserve.

In the fallout from the failed crotch-bomb plot over Detroit, many have pointed out the fact that right-wingers have been particularly dishonest and hypocritical. Conservatives have been putting outright blame on Obama for the failure to catch this beforehand, whereas they blamed Clinton for the 9/11 attacks, not Bush; where Obama is to blame for an intelligence agency ignoring the father’s warning, Bush was somehow not to blame for ignoring a plethora of warning signs, several of which were delivered directly to him. Where Bush was hailed as “keeping us safe” even while the Shoe Bomber, in almost identical a fashion to the Crotch Bomber, attempted to blow up a plane to the U.S., Obama is criticized for not keeping us safe. And while Republicans excoriate the Obama administration for the lack of security, they brazenly ignore the fact that they themselves voted down more funding for airport security. Not to mention the fact that criticizing Bush on terror or security was seen as near-treasonous, while criticizing the president today is apparently not at all a problem.

I look at these criticisms and reflect on why I don’t blog on politics quite as much now: it’s all trite. Of course they’re acting like that. Of course the facts don’t matter one bit. Of course Republicans are being hypocritical, lying bags of scum; hasn’t that been all too well established? Just like it’s been established that Democratic politicians are generally weak-kneed sissies afraid of their own shadows.

The pattern is pretty simple: anything a conservative does: good; anything a liberal does: bad–even if the two acts are identical. Just claim they’re different somehow, ignore logic and consistency, blame any evidence to the contrary as an artifact of the “Liberal Media,” and there you have it. The neoconservative narrative. Throw in some social religion for further control, a few more tax cuts for the rich, disregard a few more civil liberties (while always steering clear of the control-irrelevant gun ownership), deepen the dependence on corporations, and you’re getting close to seeing the overall sheep-herding architecture of the New Conservative Society. Within that twisted framework, even Sarah Palin makes perfect sense.

Here’s why Palin is a front-runner for president in 2012: she fits the now-standard right-wing NeoCon bill to a tee. They started with Reagan, had to allow Bush Sr. because he was VP, but then picked up the ball with Bush Jr., and are now lined up and ready with Palin.

In short: they have someone with folksy, down-home stage-and-screen appeal who’ll whip up the masses, someone on board ideologically, but most importantly–this is the real key–someone who is not all that bright and can be easily manipulated to allow the real show to be run by the NeoCon lieutenants.

I don’t think that Palin’s selection as VP in ‘08 was a mistake. Clearly McCain didn’t choose her–it was made by more powerful forces behind the scenes who likely had their eyes on Palin already as the most likely to suit their eventual needs. I think there was an understanding that Obama would win, and that they didn’t have anyone who could really pull it off, not after the horrific mess that Bush created. They even needed a Democrat who they could then use as a punching bag and heap all of the blame for their eight years of misdeeds. So they did what any football team would do in a rebuilding year: they set up future prospects, began to establish strengths for the next season, and began a strategy aimed for that time. If they happened to win in ‘08, then great, but I think they knew it was a lost cause.

Palin is the New Bush, who was the New Reagan. The NeoCons have a game plan, it has done well in the past, and they will continue to go by the playbook.

If you wanted an example of how Republicans have become a party of bullying asses who want to suppress free debate, look no further. Warning: although containing no profanity or violence, this clip may induce illness.

Why do I get the feeling that Lieberman was waiting for the microsecond after Snowe to become irrelevant before he jumped in front of the cameras so he could become important again?

One gets the feeling that he, as well as the conservative Dems who jumped on the stage right after him, are doing nothing more than holding health care for everyone hostage so they can benefit themselves. Holding the very lives of countless Americans as political game chips.

Of course, in Lieberman’s case, he is so much a Republican in Democrat’s clothing that one could imagine that he’s vying to become a right-wing hero.

Frankly, I have trouble seeing how Democrats held on to this ass for so long.They should have dumped him the moment he started actively campaigning for John McCain, an act of betrayal difficult to match. But now, for the schmuck to put his own political fortunes ahead of health care reform? He’s not just an ass, he’s a superlative ass.

They probably won’t do it, but if Lieberman is the downfall of health care reform or succeeds in watering it down one bit, Dems should strip him of every title and chair and dump him in the sewer with the garbage. If Lieberman does nothing for Dems and only sabotages everything of importance, he is worse than an enemy, and should be treated as such.

If I thought that he was doing this even in the least bit for his constituents, I’d feel differently. But it’s clear that Lieberman cares about Lieberman and no one else.

As the saying goes, with friends like these.