If cringing comedy is your thing, check out the latest offering from birther preacher James David Manning, who has a reputation even in birther-land for being, well, weird. Last week, he held a show trial at his Harlem church in which he accused "long-legged mack daddy" President Obama of having been born in Kenya. Not only that, he claimed Obama never actually attended Columbia University in the early 1980s, instead going to Afghanistan to fight for the mujaheddin against the occupying Soviets on behalf of the CIA. Wow, not even Orly Taitz at her loopiest ever said that.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Manning's little play court found Obama guilty of all charges. Of course, since it wasn't a real court, the legal value of this "verdict" is precisely zero. But since he was upset that no one apart from birthers and people who find comedy gold in birther antics paid any attention to him, he held a press conference at his church Friday afternoon at which he attacked the "bullying" media and Obama in equal measures.
All I can say is that Manning has a lot to learn about staging press conferences. The video shows about a dozen people, widely spaced out in the otherwise empty church, sitting quietly and listening. One woman asks him to clarify some of his accusations, particularly, "Why would Obama, with his Marxist background, be so eager to throw in with the CIA and go to Afghanistan and fight Socialists?" Manning, clearly irritated at having been caught in a rather basic contradiction, says the trial is over and refuses to answer. Another person, evidently one of Manning's own parishioners, asks if a day of prayer and fasting can make the "verdict" sink in. And so on.
Manning even claimed his fake trial was genuine because the police let it happen. "We have a verdict that is legal," he said. "Were it not so, we would have been arrested. You don't put the alleged sitting president of the United States on trial right in front of the police department if you don't have a right to do it."
Actually, it's more likely that the cops didn't interfere because holding a pretend trial is not a crime. Silly, yes, but not criminal. Now if Manning or one of his followers try to rush Obama and arrest him, the police might have something to say about that.
And so another birther bombshell is revealed to be a dud. Manning and his followers can rage all they like, but they're still just another bunch of conspiracy theorists, and their rage doesn't make it true.
5/24/2010
5/21/2010
Randbagged
Exactly one day after winning the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky, tea-party darling Rand Paul got into a lot of trouble. Going on NPR and MSNBC, he was asked about his previous writings that government has no power to ban discrimination by private businesses. He stuck by what he said and all hell broke loose.
You see, in Paul's world, private property rights trump everything. Restaurants can tell black patrons to take a hike. Housing associations can tell Jewish buyers to go back to the shtetl. Companies can tell people who can't get up the stairs to the office that they're on their own, or just refuse to hire them at all. This, of course, flies in the face of the American ideal that everyone must be treated fairly, and has not gone over well with people who have faced discrimination or whose families faced it.
Oh yes, and he said today that President Obama is "un-American" for criticizing BP's turning the Gulf of Mexico into a big oil slick. "Accidents happen," he said dismissively, in one fell swoop losing the support of people whose homes and livelihoods are in danger because they are now covered with oil.
In between bouts of whining over having been called out on his positions, Paul says that the magic of the market will drive discriminatory companies out of business because people won't go there. But guess what? It doesn't work that way.
He seems to have forgotten about two hundred years of American history, when businesses routinely discriminated against anyone who was "other" and prospered while doing it. Blacks, Jews, Irish, Catholics, Hispanics, Asians - the list of excluded people goes on and on. (As a straight white male Presbyterian, Paul has likely never been the victim of any kind of discrimination.) And these biases in private business finally stopped only when government stepped in and said, "you can't do that."
Paul says that freedom includes the freedom to discriminate. This is, of course, well known in his libertarian and tea-party circles, but this week's ruckus is the first time the wider public has heard of it. And from the public reaction, they don't think much of it. Even the larger GOP is backing away from him, knowing that there's simply no way to win this fight.
Paul needs to realize that while in a perfect world no one would discriminate against anyone, we do not live in a perfect world, and people do discriminate. Government has a widely recognized and very legitimate function in putting a stop to bigotry both public and private.
And the longer Rand Paul takes to realize that, the quicker he will be an ex-candidate.
You see, in Paul's world, private property rights trump everything. Restaurants can tell black patrons to take a hike. Housing associations can tell Jewish buyers to go back to the shtetl. Companies can tell people who can't get up the stairs to the office that they're on their own, or just refuse to hire them at all. This, of course, flies in the face of the American ideal that everyone must be treated fairly, and has not gone over well with people who have faced discrimination or whose families faced it.
Oh yes, and he said today that President Obama is "un-American" for criticizing BP's turning the Gulf of Mexico into a big oil slick. "Accidents happen," he said dismissively, in one fell swoop losing the support of people whose homes and livelihoods are in danger because they are now covered with oil.
In between bouts of whining over having been called out on his positions, Paul says that the magic of the market will drive discriminatory companies out of business because people won't go there. But guess what? It doesn't work that way.
He seems to have forgotten about two hundred years of American history, when businesses routinely discriminated against anyone who was "other" and prospered while doing it. Blacks, Jews, Irish, Catholics, Hispanics, Asians - the list of excluded people goes on and on. (As a straight white male Presbyterian, Paul has likely never been the victim of any kind of discrimination.) And these biases in private business finally stopped only when government stepped in and said, "you can't do that."
Paul says that freedom includes the freedom to discriminate. This is, of course, well known in his libertarian and tea-party circles, but this week's ruckus is the first time the wider public has heard of it. And from the public reaction, they don't think much of it. Even the larger GOP is backing away from him, knowing that there's simply no way to win this fight.
Paul needs to realize that while in a perfect world no one would discriminate against anyone, we do not live in a perfect world, and people do discriminate. Government has a widely recognized and very legitimate function in putting a stop to bigotry both public and private.
And the longer Rand Paul takes to realize that, the quicker he will be an ex-candidate.
5/20/2010
There's Gold in Them Thar Shills
Glenn Beck's long list of offensive and just plain bizarre antics, from calling President Obama a racist to fantasizing about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, have cost him many of his advertisers. One of his few remaining sponsors, Goldline, sells gold coins to the public as an investment - and indeed, Beck appears in Goldline's ads as a paid endorser.
Now, Beck has a long history of scaring his fans with hysterical warnings of imminent hyperinflation and economic collapse. (Stephen Colbert once memorably ridiculed Beck's overheated rhetoric by welcoming viewers to his "Doom Bunker.") And in every warning, Beck always claims that gold is the perfect investment, the ultimate hedge against the wave of socialist cannibal zombies that will doubtless overwhelm us all. Cut to a commercial for Goldline, which has ridden this wave of paranoia to estimated annual sales of more than half a billion dollars.
But the problem, as Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) charged this week, is that Goldline routinely sells their products at such a high markup that gold prices would have to double in order for buyers just to break even. In other words, they rip off their own customers. He also had harsh words for how Goldline works with Beck and other right-wing talkers to create a market for their product by scaring listeners and viewers.
Beck, ever the martyr, placed himself on - well, a cross of gold, portraying himself as the lone voice crying out in the wilderness against the inflation which will (any day now, it'll happen, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming) destroy us all. He also hit back in his usual adult manner by launching a website called Weiner Facts, which appears to consist mostly of Photoshopped images combining photos of Weiner with photos of hot dogs. Even for someone of Beck's arguably doubtful mental stability, it's pretty inexplicable.
An article by the liberal Mother Jones found that Beck and Goldline form the perfect symbiosis, feeding off each other in an endless cycle of paranoia, high-pressure sales tactics and overpriced merchandise. It's a particularly sordid cycle - Beck terrifies his viewers with outlandish warnings of what he claims is to come and says they can live only by buying gold. Goldline runs ads selling gold at outrageous markups to these same viewers, then turns around and gives Beck a large sack of money for being a "paid endorser." Repeat.
There are, of course, legitimate gold dealers who make a living without using their customers' fears as an excuse to rip them off. But Goldline, aided and abetted by Glenn Beck, does not appear to be one of them.
Now, Beck has a long history of scaring his fans with hysterical warnings of imminent hyperinflation and economic collapse. (Stephen Colbert once memorably ridiculed Beck's overheated rhetoric by welcoming viewers to his "Doom Bunker.") And in every warning, Beck always claims that gold is the perfect investment, the ultimate hedge against the wave of socialist cannibal zombies that will doubtless overwhelm us all. Cut to a commercial for Goldline, which has ridden this wave of paranoia to estimated annual sales of more than half a billion dollars.
But the problem, as Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) charged this week, is that Goldline routinely sells their products at such a high markup that gold prices would have to double in order for buyers just to break even. In other words, they rip off their own customers. He also had harsh words for how Goldline works with Beck and other right-wing talkers to create a market for their product by scaring listeners and viewers.
Beck, ever the martyr, placed himself on - well, a cross of gold, portraying himself as the lone voice crying out in the wilderness against the inflation which will (any day now, it'll happen, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming) destroy us all. He also hit back in his usual adult manner by launching a website called Weiner Facts, which appears to consist mostly of Photoshopped images combining photos of Weiner with photos of hot dogs. Even for someone of Beck's arguably doubtful mental stability, it's pretty inexplicable.
An article by the liberal Mother Jones found that Beck and Goldline form the perfect symbiosis, feeding off each other in an endless cycle of paranoia, high-pressure sales tactics and overpriced merchandise. It's a particularly sordid cycle - Beck terrifies his viewers with outlandish warnings of what he claims is to come and says they can live only by buying gold. Goldline runs ads selling gold at outrageous markups to these same viewers, then turns around and gives Beck a large sack of money for being a "paid endorser." Repeat.
There are, of course, legitimate gold dealers who make a living without using their customers' fears as an excuse to rip them off. But Goldline, aided and abetted by Glenn Beck, does not appear to be one of them.
5/19/2010
The Ultimate Birther Theory
Orly Taitz, Joseph Farah and other birthers like to claim that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen and so cannot be president. First they said his Hawaii birth certificate is a fake and he was actually born in Kenya. Then they said okay, we'll admit he was born in Hawaii, but he's still not a natural-born citizen because his father was Kenyan. After that, it kind of devolved to the point where they're desperately trying to avoid acknowledging that they hate Obama simply because he's a black man with a foreign name.
In doing so, they have fallen back on everything from channeling 18th-century political philosophers to arguing the significance of "certificate" vs. "certification" to (probably) reading tea leaves and goat entrails. Nothing has worked; courts have repeatedly ruled that Obama, having been born in Hawaii, is a natural-born citizen and thus eligible. Not that this has slowed the birthers down in the slightest - take, for example, their little pretend trial in Harlem earlier this week.
But I've got them all beat. Like the birthers, I have scoured Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution with a fine-toothed comb and have made a startling discovery. It appears that only ten presidents were eligible and thus everyone occupying the Oval Office since then has been an unconstitutional usurper. Including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Here's how it works. The relevant section of the Constitution, which the birthers quote all the time, reads:
So in the proud tradition of the birthers, I proclaim that a Grand Conspiracy involving every historian, scholar, journalist, politician, civics teacher, etc must exist to allow so many people to have become president when they were not eligible to do so. And if anyone disagrees with me, that only means they're in on the conspiracy too.
Now, you know and I know that this is a load of dingo's kidneys, but it's just the sort of load that the birthers would embrace with open arms. And they'll probably take this little thought experiment and run with it too.
In doing so, they have fallen back on everything from channeling 18th-century political philosophers to arguing the significance of "certificate" vs. "certification" to (probably) reading tea leaves and goat entrails. Nothing has worked; courts have repeatedly ruled that Obama, having been born in Hawaii, is a natural-born citizen and thus eligible. Not that this has slowed the birthers down in the slightest - take, for example, their little pretend trial in Harlem earlier this week.
But I've got them all beat. Like the birthers, I have scoured Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution with a fine-toothed comb and have made a startling discovery. It appears that only ten presidents were eligible and thus everyone occupying the Oval Office since then has been an unconstitutional usurper. Including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Here's how it works. The relevant section of the Constitution, which the birthers quote all the time, reads:
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.Note the comma between the words "States" and "at." Under the rules of grammar, a comma is used to separate distinct phrases which can be removed from the sentence without rendering it unreadable. Given that, if you remove the "or a Citizen of the United States" section, you wind up with:
No Person except a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.So taking the commas into account, the phrase says that only people who were natural-born or other types of citizens, and who were citizens only when the Constitution was adopted in 1787, can be president. If the Founders had really wanted to add a grandfather clause allowing people who became Americans upon independence to be president, they would have left the comma out, and the phrase would have read:
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.If that's the case (and by birther logic it must be) every president born after 1787 was not eligible for that office and thus every law enacted since the administration of John Tyler (born in 1790) is null and void. Except for Zachary Taylor, who's OK since he was born in 1784.
So in the proud tradition of the birthers, I proclaim that a Grand Conspiracy involving every historian, scholar, journalist, politician, civics teacher, etc must exist to allow so many people to have become president when they were not eligible to do so. And if anyone disagrees with me, that only means they're in on the conspiracy too.
Now, you know and I know that this is a load of dingo's kidneys, but it's just the sort of load that the birthers would embrace with open arms. And they'll probably take this little thought experiment and run with it too.
5/18/2010
Raising the Bar
I thought the birther pretend trial in New York was comedy gold, but it actually got eclipsed today.
Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), a holier-than-thou Bible-thumping family-values evangelical Christian conservative, resigned this morning after news reports exposed his affair with an office staffer. At first glance, it appears to be just another entry in the long, long list of mostly Republican moralists who claim a divine right to tell everyone else how to live their lives while being rather less than divine themselves, but this one has something just a little bit special.
Last fall, Souder's office released a YouTube video touting his participation in a 2008 Congressional hearing on abstinence education.
He's a big fan of this approach to sex-ed classes, blithely ignoring the many studies showing that it just doesn't work. But that's par for the course. What elevates the video from just another bit of hypocrisy to an instant classic is the fact that Tracy Jackson, the woman shown interviewing Souder, is the woman with whom Souder had an affair.
Yes, he actually made a video promoting abstinence outside of marriage with the very same woman he was shagging outside his own marriage.
You really can't make this stuff up. Souder has raised the chutzpah bar for everyone else. C'mon, all you self-righteous prudes, try harder!
Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), a holier-than-thou Bible-thumping family-values evangelical Christian conservative, resigned this morning after news reports exposed his affair with an office staffer. At first glance, it appears to be just another entry in the long, long list of mostly Republican moralists who claim a divine right to tell everyone else how to live their lives while being rather less than divine themselves, but this one has something just a little bit special.
Last fall, Souder's office released a YouTube video touting his participation in a 2008 Congressional hearing on abstinence education.
He's a big fan of this approach to sex-ed classes, blithely ignoring the many studies showing that it just doesn't work. But that's par for the course. What elevates the video from just another bit of hypocrisy to an instant classic is the fact that Tracy Jackson, the woman shown interviewing Souder, is the woman with whom Souder had an affair.
Yes, he actually made a video promoting abstinence outside of marriage with the very same woman he was shagging outside his own marriage.
You really can't make this stuff up. Souder has raised the chutzpah bar for everyone else. C'mon, all you self-righteous prudes, try harder!
5/13/2010
Punishing the Child
As the Catholic Church finally realizes that protecting child molesters while threatening their victims into silence might not have been such a great idea, and that dismissing the resulting outrage as "petty gossip" is an even worse idea, they clearly still have a ways to go.
St. Paul Elementary School, a private Catholic K-8 school in Hingham, Massachusetts, is currently in the news because they first accepted and then rejected a boy to enter the school in the third grade. Why? It's not because he has disciplinary problems or because his academics aren't up to snuff. It's because his parents are both women, and the Church says homosexuality is a sin.
Yes, the Church is actually pushing away an eight-year-old boy because it doesn't like his moms. And I thought the whole notion of punishing children for the supposed sins of their parents went out sometime in the 19th century.
The school claims they rejected the boy because "teachers wouldn't be prepared to answer questions her son might have because the school's teachings about marriage conflict with what he sees in his family."
Well, that's the teachers' problem, isn't it? I mean, they're supposed to be able to answer kids' questions. That's sort of the whole purpose of going to school. If they can't or won't answer a student's questions, they should pick another profession.
Now, to be fair, St. Paul is a private school and as such can set whatever admission criteria it likes. But they need to be consistent. If they're going to reject children of gay parents, they'd better be ready to kick out any kids whose parents are divorced, use birth control, are unmarried, eat meat on Fridays, conceived their children via fertility treatments, or commit any other violation of Church canon. Of course, that would make their enrollment plummet from the current 250 to - oh, about six or seven.
But we all know that won't happen. The Church will save its punishments for the children of gay parents. After all, it's so much easier to go after kids with a particular kind of "wrong" parents than to reconsider the doctrine which turns those parents - and their children - into sinners in the first place.
St. Paul Elementary School, a private Catholic K-8 school in Hingham, Massachusetts, is currently in the news because they first accepted and then rejected a boy to enter the school in the third grade. Why? It's not because he has disciplinary problems or because his academics aren't up to snuff. It's because his parents are both women, and the Church says homosexuality is a sin.
Yes, the Church is actually pushing away an eight-year-old boy because it doesn't like his moms. And I thought the whole notion of punishing children for the supposed sins of their parents went out sometime in the 19th century.
The school claims they rejected the boy because "teachers wouldn't be prepared to answer questions her son might have because the school's teachings about marriage conflict with what he sees in his family."
Well, that's the teachers' problem, isn't it? I mean, they're supposed to be able to answer kids' questions. That's sort of the whole purpose of going to school. If they can't or won't answer a student's questions, they should pick another profession.
Now, to be fair, St. Paul is a private school and as such can set whatever admission criteria it likes. But they need to be consistent. If they're going to reject children of gay parents, they'd better be ready to kick out any kids whose parents are divorced, use birth control, are unmarried, eat meat on Fridays, conceived their children via fertility treatments, or commit any other violation of Church canon. Of course, that would make their enrollment plummet from the current 250 to - oh, about six or seven.
But we all know that won't happen. The Church will save its punishments for the children of gay parents. After all, it's so much easier to go after kids with a particular kind of "wrong" parents than to reconsider the doctrine which turns those parents - and their children - into sinners in the first place.
5/05/2010
If the Bag Fits
If there's one thing teabaggers are very good at, it's getting offended. They can pour out personal abuse and name-calling by the bucketful ("Obambi," "Odumbo," "Obozo," "Obowma," etc) but say one thing about them and they carry on like a five-year-old girl whose pigtails have just been pulled.
Case in point is the "teabagger" name itself. The tea-party movement came up with it early last year, right after Obama became president, and it became very popular very quickly. It was everywhere, showing up in such forms as "Tea Bag Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You" and "Teabagging 4 Jesus," among others. One protester in Washington even threw a box of tea bags over the White House fence, much to the consternation of the Secret Service.
All that was before someone in the movement learned how to use Google and discovered the term's other meaning. And before you could say "George Orwell," they abandoned the term "teabagger" en masse, insisted they had never used it in the first place, and whined about how only mean liberals, Democrats and Communists called them that.
It didn't work. Liberal bloggers and pundits have long taken immense glee in pointing out how the teabaggers adopted the term as their own and then ran away from it as fast as they could.
But when the tea partiers have an opportunity, however ridiculous, to whimper and cast themselves as the victims, they grab on with both hands and won't let go. For example, in the new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Obama is quoted as saying that the Republicans' lockstep vote against the economic stimulus bill "helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans."
Cue the screams of outrage in three...two...one...
The simple fact, of course, is that the tea-party movement originally called themselves "teabaggers," no matter how hard they try to forget it or bludgeon everyone else into forgetting it as well. Cloaking themselves in the political mantle of the original Boston Tea Party participants, the teabaggers loved calling themselves that and embraced the tea-bag image at every opportunity. Well, at least until they found out what it meant.
But hey, if the bag fits, wear it.
Case in point is the "teabagger" name itself. The tea-party movement came up with it early last year, right after Obama became president, and it became very popular very quickly. It was everywhere, showing up in such forms as "Tea Bag Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You" and "Teabagging 4 Jesus," among others. One protester in Washington even threw a box of tea bags over the White House fence, much to the consternation of the Secret Service.
All that was before someone in the movement learned how to use Google and discovered the term's other meaning. And before you could say "George Orwell," they abandoned the term "teabagger" en masse, insisted they had never used it in the first place, and whined about how only mean liberals, Democrats and Communists called them that.
It didn't work. Liberal bloggers and pundits have long taken immense glee in pointing out how the teabaggers adopted the term as their own and then ran away from it as fast as they could.
But when the tea partiers have an opportunity, however ridiculous, to whimper and cast themselves as the victims, they grab on with both hands and won't let go. For example, in the new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Obama is quoted as saying that the Republicans' lockstep vote against the economic stimulus bill "helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans."
Cue the screams of outrage in three...two...one...
- Michelle Malkin: "Really. How many more selective civility police lectures can we take from this vulgarity-clogged White House?"
- Ian Lazaran: "Obama may be the most thin-skinned President we've ever had. It'll be funny to see him apologize for his crude, offensive, and juvenile language when this book officially comes out."
- Diane Student: "I for one appreciate the gay slur. Oh yes, Mr. President, thank you so much!"
- "Obama you ignorant arrogant individual !!!!! if you don't have something intelligent to say then you should keep that hole in your face shut !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
- "I would much rather be a 'TeaBagger', than a communist, socialist, marxist, arrogant, rude dumbass like our prez is? How's that for civility??"
- "Obama as always has NO class. For a president to use the gay slang 'teabaggers' tells you all about him."
- "STFU you racist muslim dirtbag"
The simple fact, of course, is that the tea-party movement originally called themselves "teabaggers," no matter how hard they try to forget it or bludgeon everyone else into forgetting it as well. Cloaking themselves in the political mantle of the original Boston Tea Party participants, the teabaggers loved calling themselves that and embraced the tea-bag image at every opportunity. Well, at least until they found out what it meant.
But hey, if the bag fits, wear it.
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