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POPSThe Keyboard Commandos want Obama to be tough
To Brooks, the big question is whether Obama possesses "the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it." That is, whether the president is "a very manly, virile, manful person, and a firm believer in strict discipline, corporal punishment, and nude apartment wrestling." Oops, never mind. That last bit was Captain Ned. But it does get old hearing this cohort of Ivy League toughs -- most of whom one suspects haven't had even a fistfight since third grade -- describe every U.S. foreign policy issue as a testosterone test. One suspects it may not be Obama's virility they're worried about. Next came Cheney's devoted daughter. After President Obama paid a 4 a.m. visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to salute the flag-draped caskets of 18 American servicemen arriving home from Afghanistan, and to console their families, Liz Cheney appeared on -- where else? -- Fox News radio to suggest a cheap political stunt.
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POPSA Beckean Slip: Confusing the president with bin Laden, while touting theory that Obama is a Marxist This is what we'll call a Beckean Slip: An apparent slip of the tongue that is most likely intentional, and at the bare minimum clearly exposes the desire to confuse the public. It isn't the first time Beck has slipped and mixed up Osama bin Laden's name with President Obama's. And it certainly won't be the last. However, it does tend to undermine Beck's subsequent claim to having this high-level, all-seeing mind that is "right" about a whole host of things (that he's actually been wrong about). Indeed, it reveals a confused mind incapable of clearly distinguishing between the president of the United States and a cave-dwelling terrorist. Beck also adds that "I could be wrong" but "I haven't been before"? Um, yeah, except for the dozens of times he actually has been wrong. (Remember when he was predicting that Americans would eventually go for McCain at the polls? That prediction turned out well, didn't it?)
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POPSTucker Carlson and the Right's perpetual self-victimhood Is Tucker Carlson lying or just completely ignorant of the subject matter on which he's opining? The press has been anything but "silent" about this. It's been a virtual consensus from establishment pundits and journalists of every type that the Obama White House is doing something terribly wrong by criticizing Fox. And as usual for the vapid, group-think, script-repeating, mindless wind-up dolls who compose the Beltway press corps, they even have their own endlessly repeated platitudes for condemning Obama's criticisms of Fox: it's Nixonesque. Enemies List. Also as usual, they are echoing the theme propounded by Karl Rove on Fox: "We heard this before from Richard Nixon. And we have this White House prone to that kind of attitude. . . . This is the White House engaging in its own version of the media Enemies List."
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POPSHow to avoid the GOP's mistakes during the Bush years? All one has to do is act like a citizen first, not a party apparatchik or fan club devotee, which means nothing more than this: (1) If Obama takes action or makes a decision that you think is good and constructive, say so and give him credit; (2) If Obama takes action or makes a decision that you think is bad, wrong and/or destructive, say so and criticize him for it; (3) If there were things you claimed to find so horrible and wrong when Bush did them (indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus, renditions, state secrets, endless wars, military commissions, compulsive secrecy), and Obama does them, apply the same standards. As Bob Herbert put it rather simply: "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House."
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POPSBagram: The sham of closing Guantanamo Yesterday, the Obama DOJ -- as expected -- filed a legal brief (.pdf) which adopted the arguments originally made by the Bush DOJ to insist that detainees whom they abduct from around the world and then ship to Bagram (rather than Guantanamo) lack any constitutional rights whatsoever, including habeas review. The Obama administration is appealing from a decision (.pdf) by Bush-43-appointed District Court Judge John Bates which, applying Boumediene, held that detainees at Bagram who are originally detained outside of Afghanistan have the right to habeas review (Afghan citizens detained in Afghanistan have none, he found). In other words, after Obama praised Boumediene as "defending the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy," he's now attempting to make a complete mockery of that decision by insisting that it is inapplicable as long as he decides to ship detainees from, say, Thailand to Bagram rather than Guantanamo. Obama apparently sees "our core values" as nothing more th
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POPSThe Blackening of the president Obama's white support trended slowly downward throughout the summer in the weekly Gallup poll, but took another relatively large (4 point) drop between July 19 and July 26, a fiery week that saw the arrest of Skip Gates, Obama's comment that Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in that incident, followed by Obama's "recalibration" of those words. I said at the time that Obama's commenting on the Gates mess was a mistake, even if it was a completely understandable one. Replying reflexively, as a victim of racial profiling, Obama was sincere -- but in that moment, there's no denying, he got blacker to a segment of the white population. That same crazy week also featured the rise of Birtherism as represented by a screaming woman interrupting moderate GOP Rep. Mike Castle's town hall claiming Obama wasn't born in the U.S. It was a harbinger: August brought a wave of frenzied anti-Obama organizing at raucous meetings -- what a Republican fundraising group proudly labeled "town hells" -- whe
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POPSJ-Street: The New Israel Lobby It is safe to say that at least one participant in the meeting enjoyed this exchange immensely: Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and executive director of J Street, a year-old lobbying group with progressive views on Israel. Some of the mainstream groups vehemently protested the White House decision to invite J Street, which they regard as a marginal organization located well beyond the consensus that they themselves seek to enforce. But J Street shares the Obama administration’s agenda, and the invitation stayed. Ben-Ami didn’t say a word at the meeting — he is aware of J Street’s neophyte status — but afterward he was quoted extensively in the press, which vexed the mainstream groups all over again. J Street does not accept the “public harmony” rule any more than Obama does. In a conversation a month before the White House session, Ben-Ami explained to me: “We’re trying to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel. You don’t have to be noncritical. You don’t have to adopt the party line. It
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POPSThe far right says Obama is bad for our kids Wrong. I never imagined the outbreak of right-wing crazy that Obama's gesture would provoke, and this time it's hard not to see racism behind the hysteria. The message is "Obama's coming for our children!" the standard cry against scary boogeymen in every culture. I mean, really, what besides Obama's race could make him so scary to these people? That he's a Marxist socialist fascist Nazi? I'd argue that the only reason those extreme epithets have taken hold goes back to reason No. 1: Our first black president is provoking some outsize and irrational reactions. Especially since, as has now been well-documented, President George H.W. Bush addressed American students in 1991, and Ronald Reagan did so via C-SPAN in 1988. (Bush talked mainly about the importance of education, while Reagan hailed the benefits of low taxes and the line-item veto.) President George W. Bush appealed to "the children of the country" to back the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, to no public crit
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POPSThe So Called Liberal Media XXVIIII: Why Villagers are clueless Those of you who remember Paul Krugman's often harsh criticisms of Obama during the election campaign might be surprised to read Howard Kurtz's media column which puts him first among the disappointed former Obama cheerleaders. Krugman has certainly been critical of Obama's performance in office, but this is only news for Kurtz, not people familiar with Krugman's writings. All Villagers aren't wrong in everything they write obviously, certainly not Kurtz, but this latest error is laughable. I can understand if it was a matter of interpretation, but come on Howard, this one wasn't even close to being on the mark. (h/t Atrios)
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POPSCrazy right-wing myths about Obama 2.0 Cont.... Myth: Obama plans to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the United States. Who's spreading it: One of the original sources of the belief might have been this Feb. 7 article. New Media Journal is a news site run by a nonprofit group called BasicsProject.org, which states that its mission is to "re-introduce the American public to the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant socio-political issues important to our country, specifically, but not limited to, the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth Column." The diatribe below, posted on Snopes.com, seems to have started as a post on Wizbang that picked up the claims in the New Media Journal article. It also turned up here and here. What they believe: "President Barack Obama has signed an executive order ... allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to resettle in the United States. Sure, what can go wrong when w
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POPS Obama's "interference" in Israeli politics Cont.... "Today’s article from The Jerusalem Post notes that Kadima officials are worried that a perception by Israelis of undue interference from Obama -- whether the perception is justified or not -- will strengthen Netanyahu’s government due to resentment by Israeli voters. We might want to remember that lesson when it comes to Palestinians specifically and other countries generally: citizens in other countries tend not to like it when we try to dictate to them who should govern them and who shouldn't, and the attempt often emboldens support for the very people we oppose."
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POPSPressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations From the article: "Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months." Except that Feinstein is deep into all things illegal and un-Constitutional, having backed the worst of Bush's initiatives. I expect a whitewash.
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POPSKeith Olbermann: "President Obama, You Are Wrong" No excuses. I see some on the Left trying to justify Obama's move here. Oh he published the memos, good for him. But that is NOT enough. Justice delayed is Justice denied. Stay silent and this will happen again, perhaps closer than you think.
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POPSObama seeks new relationship with Latin America Those issues, though not on the summit agenda, are sure to be debated. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and like-minded leaders are expected to push for Cuba to be readmitted to the Organization of American States. Debate over Cuba would underscore the divide between the United States and the region. Washington has said it would not end its 47-year-old embargo on the communist island. But Obama is looking at loosening restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba, steps many view as inadequate. "The measures that the administration seems to be willing to roll out regarding Cuban-American family travel are so limited in their impact, narrow in their scope that perversely this administration, which wants the summit not to be a Cuba summit, might make it a Cuba summit," said Julia Sweig, head of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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POPSBachmann: Obama Wants "Re-Education Camps For Young People" (AUDIO) There is a lot to critique about the Obama administration from continuing neoliberal economic policies to protecting war criminals (and even embracing some of their tactics and world view). You might talk about defense spending, foreign policy and the like. But this is pure scaremongering insanity. Apparently is the only card this idiots have to play. Where the hell was she when Dear Leader Bush was wiping his @$$ with the Constitution?
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POPSThe truth about Barack Obama's Irish teleprompter "gaffe" Ironically, therefore, Obama was ad-libbing rather than mindlessly reading the wrong speech from a teleprompter. I've exchanged emails with Englund and he confirmed this was the case and kindly supplied me with an audio file of the event that removes all doubt.
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POPSGrowing hate groups blame Obama, economy Obama serves as a "visual aid" that is helping respark a sense of purpose in current supporters and lure new members, said neo-Nazi David Duke, the former Klan leader who was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in the 1980s. Duke said he fears "the white European-American" heritage will soon be destroyed. He added that his Web site sees around 40,000 unique visitors a day, up from 15,000 a day before Obama won the election. Racist anger toward Obama was evident even before he became president. Two weeks before Obama won, authorities said they foiled a skinhead plot to assassinate him. The two suspects, based in Tennessee, also apparently planned to shoot and decapitate dozens of African-Americans, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said. Police say a man in Brockton, Massachusetts, allegedly targeted minorities after President Obama's inauguration. They say the man raped a woman, killed her sister and another man after several months of researc
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