Few would argue the fact that Citizens United has been a major player in the Republican primary...and many if not most would concede that none of it has been healthy ...
As if you needed another reason to not vote Romney.
Celebrity business magnate Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney for president Thursday, telling reporters he will not mount an independent campaign if ...
In a perfect world, the Republican contest to find a nominee to face Barack Obama would go on forever...or at least until August. You cannot attach a number to the ...
I suspect there are a ton of conservatives secretly agreeing with Begala and while it's too early in the game for Dems to get cocky, it's difficult to not smile ...
Quotes don't get much better than this one by Bob Dole.
"Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked a perplexed Gingrich, to whom Dole bluntly ...
After the beating Gingrich took last night, it's hard to imagine under what scenario he can make a comeback. Florida is going to Romney and for Gingrich to regain the ...
There's a lot out there on the President's SOTU, so I'll keep my thoughts short and sweet.
The speech did what it had to do which was target liberals and independents ...
The highlights from last night's debate.
- Newt Gingrich can't wait to become president so he can revisit the early 60s and overthrow Castro in Cuba. War, baby, war.
- Santorum, who ...
It appears that the South Carolina verdict is forcing Romney to start taking Gingrich seriously.
“We’re not choosing a talk show host, we’re choosing a leader,” Romney said, saying that their ...
Mike Huckabee offers advice to Mitt Romney concerning his unreleased tax returns.
Let him [Romney] make this challenge: "I'll release my tax returns when Barack Obama releases his college transcripts and ...
Via Political Humor...
"Mitt Romney is coming under fire because even though he is a multimillionaire, he only paid 15 percent in taxes. That's not a tax, that's barely a tip." ...
Good line.
My guess is that after Romney fails to beat Obama in the general, Huntsman will be back in 2016. The most electable guy in the field and he could ...
I found this pretty funny...and accurate. It comes from a reader over at Balloon Juice.
So, let’s review. The contenders for the GOP nomination are
A vulture capitalist who believes that any ...
Lively little debate going on at one of last week's posts with Libertarianism put under the microscope.
ocLiberal:
I know I am in sketchy territory here, (start the indignant shouting now) but ...
In the contest to determine the winner of the Far-Right Politics gold medal, rack up a few more points for Newt Gingrich.
“I think an intelligent conservative wants the right federal ...
Via Political Humor...
"Congratulations to Mitt Romney. He won the New Hampshire primary last night. See, this is proof that even the multimillionaire son of a multimillionaire can beat the odds ...
Story 1:
North Korea punishing those who 'didn't display enough sadness over Kim Jong Il's death'
North Korean authorities are reportedly punishing citizens who did not display enough sadness over the death ...
In case you missed the story, Pope Benedict made headlines this week by doing what it is popes do best - putting the irrational fear of God into his followers.
The ...
Romney was asked whether questions dealing with distribution of wealth and power were a matter of jealousy or fairness.
You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class ...
Bobby Jindal, the young Louisiana governor, had his big moment in the spotlight last night as the designated Republican to put forth a response to President Obama’s speech to Congress and the nation. By all indications, he messed it up big time.
Conservative writer David Brook, had the following to say on Jindal’s performance last night.
“…to come up at this moment in history with a stale, “government is the problem…we can’t trust the government”…it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic, now. They may not like the way the Congress passed the stimulus bill. The idea that government is going to have no role in this…in a moment where only the Federal government is big enough to do stuff…to just ignore all that and say government’s the problem…corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending – it’s just a form of nihilism. It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is. There’s an intra-Republican debate: some people say the Republican party lost its way because it got too moderate, some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and he’s making that case. I think it’s insane. I think it’s a disaster for the party. I just think it’s unfortunate right now.”
Bobby Jindal is one of the Republican party’s great hopes; part of a new young breed of conservatives along with the likes of Tim Pawlenty, who is supposed to rescue the party from the decimation it has suffered over the last 8 years. The Economist wrote of Jindal,
“His ambition is well known, and most people think he is laying the groundwork for a run at the presidency in 2012.”
“Republican leaders will be watching closely to see if Mr Jindal, who a month ago marked his first year as the governor of one of America’s poorest and most troubled states, is the man they hope he is: the redeemer of their hard-pressed party.”
Well, based on his performance last night, Republicans had better keep looking. Aside from Jindal’s poor oratorical performance last night, the content of his speech was flat and out of step with the times. There was nothing I could pick up in what he said which would give anyone but the most fervent conservative, hope that the Republican party had any fresh ideas. Repeating the same rhetoric of the past and promoting ideas which have failed would not seem to be the way to the future.
For the Republican party, it’s back to the drawing board.
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Wow…who would of thought? Rupert Murdoch, head honcho of News Corp, apologized for the cartoon which appeard in the New York Post which linked a dead chimpanzee with the stimulus bill (see The Stimulus Bill and Racial Overtones). Many saw it as a veiled racist remark toward President Obama.
Well, after three days of refusal by the Post to apologize for the cartoon, Murdoch stepped in. While I am no fan of Rupert Murdoch, I do applaud him for saying what he did today in today’s Post. Here is what he wrote:
“As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.
Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.
Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.
We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.”
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First things first: why bother discussing what to most is a ridiculous hypothesis? Answer: Because as of November 2008, 10% of Americans believed any or all of the following:
Obama’s COLB (Certificate Of Live Birth) was forged
Obama was born in Kenya
Obama became a citizen of Indonesia when his mother remarried and his stepfather moved the family to that country
Obama’s dual citizenship at birth (his father, a Kenyan, was a citizen of Britain) does not make him a ‘natural born citizen’ and therefore disallows his right to run for the presidency
There have been court challenges and letter writing campaigns and inane comments like this one from Michael Savage, “We’re getting ready for the Communist takeover of America with a noncitizen at the helm.”
See? There are crazy people out there and it becomes imperative that we don’t allow them to make a mockery of the facts and have them influence those among us who aren’t sure what to think. It’s incumbent on all of us to not allow the crazies to run rampant and leave their delusional claims unchallenged. So here are a few facts;
Obama’s COLB has been verified by FactCheck.org to be a true document beyond question
In August 1961, the Hawaii Department of Health published a notice of Obama’s birth in 2 separate newspapers
Obama was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Kenya due to his Kenyan father but lost his Kenyan citizenship when he turned 21. The Kenyan constitution demands that one revoke all foreign citizenships at adulthood or lose citizenship. Obama has never given up his U.S. citizenship.
As for the matter of Obama not being a ‘natural born citizen’, here is what the U.S. Constitution says on the matter.
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
“The phrase “natural born Citizen” is not defined anywhere in the Constitution, as is also true with most other constitutional terms.”
“One possible source of the natural born citizen clause can be traced to a letter of July 25, 1787, from John Jay (who was born in New York) to George Washington (who was born in Virginia), presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention. John Jay wrote: “Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.” (Underlining in the original)[3] There was no debate, and this qualification for the office of the Presidency was introduced by the drafting Committee of Eleven, and then adopted without discussion by the Constitutional Convention.”
And that, my friends, are the facts. I’ll end this post with this quote from PolitiFact.com,
“It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact’s conclusion that the candidate’s name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn’t authentic. And that’s true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust.”
End of story.
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If there is any doubt that the Republican party is a tattered and lost group pulling at any straw they can to remain relevant then one need look no further than the nonsense concerning Barack Obama’s birth certificate. One would of thought that the claims Obama was not a U.S. citizen would of died by now. After much noise last year by conservatives, Obama produced his birth certificate last June which was validated by the Hawaii Department of Health. That act still wasn’t enough for the loonies and here we are in the second month of Obama’s presidency and there still exists a large group of fanatics who claim the birth certificate is a forgery and Obama is not a U.S. citizen and therefore an illegitimate president.
If the conspiracy theorists were restricted to a fringe group at the wingnut extremes of the Republican party, there would be less concern for the rest of us. Well, this week, Republican Alabama Senator Richard Shelby made the following statement when asked by a citizen as to whether there was any truth to the Obama forged birth certificate story:
“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president.”
What?!!? “You have to born in America to be president”? What did you mean by that Mr. Shelby? That Barack Obama was perhaps not really the president? That perhaps because you didn’t actually see his birth certificate, that maybe, just maybe, it’s a fake? Nice going there, Shelby. Go and give all those lunatic Obama-haters more garbage to feed there irrational logic.
Salon.com had an interesting piece last December on why the the Obama birth certificate story will never go away. The essence of the story can be summed up in the following few paragraphs.
“There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master’s degree in psychology. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it … Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.”
“Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory “develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence,” Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. “As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy.”
“Evan Harrington, a social psychologist who is an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, agrees. “One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special,” Harrington says. “The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they’ll have convenient ways to discredit [it].”"
I wonder if any of these psychologists would be willing to give a group discount for some heavy duty therapy for members of the Republican party?
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