In today's World Nut Daily, famed economist Chuck Norris says President Obama is behind the recent surge in gas prices, because it's part of his secret Kenyan plot to not get re-elected in November. Or something like that. Hey, it's Chuck Norris. If you're Chuck Norris you don't have to make sense, reality bends to fit *you*. Or something like that.
-- Badtux the Snarky Wingnut Watching Penguin
Remember the "trial" that was actually a hearing before an administrative trial judge who was charged with issuing a recommendation to the Georgia Secretary of State? Well, he issued his statement to the Birthers today:
Basically, his ruling said that the birther's "evidence" isn't -- in the words of administrative law, their "evidence" has "no probative value". I.e., it's speculations, made up silliness, unproven / unprovable nonsense, nothing that counts as evidence in the legal meaning of the term. A state administrative judge doesn't have to comply with the full multi-volume stack of books that comprise the Federal Rules of Evidence, but in every state you can't just come in and say "The President's birth certificate is forged!" -- you have to prove it, with actual evidence. Otherwise you're just expressing an opinion, and an opinion isn't proof of anything other than that, like every asshole on this planet, you got an opinion.
And in case you're wondering, even if you're a world-renowned expert on Photoshop, saying "the President's birth certificate is clearly photoshopped!" is *still* just an opinion. Under the rules of evidence of *any* state, you have to *prove* it's photoshopped, your opinion is just an opinion, which is worthless unless you can produce the actual person who photoshopped it and corroborating evidence that he indeed was there and did the job.
If there was anything the birthers had that met the most rudimentary of the rules regarding what comprises evidence in a court of law, Obama would likely be off the ballot in Georgia. But they have nothing. They will always have nothing. Because their actual problem with Obama isn't where he was born. Their actual problem is what he was born -- i.e., black.
-- Badtux the Law Penguin
So birthers in Georgia filed complaints with the Georgia Secretary of State that Obama wasn't eligible to be President because he wasn't natural-born (apparently he was born artificially in a test tube?), and the Secretary of State sighed and put the matter in the hands of an administrative law judge to decide. Now, administrative law judges aren't exactly criminal or civil judges. Really, they're not judges at all in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, they make decisions about whether state regulations are being properly applied or not. They are, in essence, clerks, not judges in the traditional sense of the word.
So anyhow, O'Really Taitz was one of the complainants, and promptly subpoena'ed Obama to testify at the hearing via filing service on Obama's Georgia lawyer. Said lawyer than complained that this was nonsense, you couldn't subpoena a sitting President into what's essentially an administrative proceeding internal to the Georgia state government that should simply review the last two dozen court rulings against Taitz and dismiss the complaint out of hand, there was no jurisdiction to subpoena Obama because Obama was not a citizen of the state of Georgia and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of the state of Georgia. The administrative law judge said "Oh yeah? Well I'm going to uphold the subpoena anyhow!"
So there it stands. Obama's lawyer basically said "Screw this, you have no jurisdiction and we will not participate, you've stamped your subpoena, now enforce it." Which is going to be problematic, because see, the Constitution sort of foresaw this problem, and made the President a citizen of the District of Columbia and thus subject only to Federal law for actions he takes as President. The only court with jurisdiction is the Federal District Court in D.C., not some podunk administrator in Atlanta. The only court that Obama must answer to as President is that court, not some clerk in Atlanta. And the lawyer for Obama *couldn't* participate, because participating would implicitly imply that this over-titled clerk had jurisdiction to issue a subpoena, which would open the flood gates to every clerk in every city hall who had a beef against the President issuing a subpoena to their own dog and pony fiasco.
Which, BTW, is an apt description of what actually happened when the hearing actually got underway. No lawyer for Obama. No Obama. Just a circus side-show of freaks and lunatics that were so ridiculous that even the administrative law judge, who is apparently a hard-core Republican but not an insane one, started cutting them off while rolling eyes and sighing heavily.
And no ruling, of course. I'm sure he wants to be well away from that collection of lunatics before he issues a ruling, probably via having a courier deliver it rather than announcing it in person. Because by this time it *has* to be obvious to him exactly what kind of people he's dealing with and that ruling any way other than the obvious (that a dude born in Hawaii is a natural-born citizen as defined by the Constitution) will result in the sort of circus that will consume his life.
-- Badtux the Law Penguin
As I've previously pointed out here, Obama is basically an Eisenhower Republican. From what I can tell from his core beliefs, he is to the right of Richard Nixon, and only barely leftward of Ronald Reagan. There is nothing about Obama's beliefs that are in any way out of the mainstream of traditional conservative thought, whether we're talking about the budget (he wants it balanced), about preserving American industrial capability (remember, it was Reagan who bailed out Harley-Davidson!), or welfare (he wants workfare, not welfare -- makes him pretty compatible with Reagan and to the right of Nixon, who wanted a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans).
So why do I keep having these awkward conversations with folks back home in Jesusland? The ones where, when the subject of Obama comes up, they say "I don't know why, I'm not a racist, but he scares me, I don't trust him"? Why the rabid Tea Party types who've made it their cause celebre' to not only paint Obama as an eeeevil soshalist Demon-crat (they did the same to Bill Clinton after all), but to paint Obama as somehow un-American, foreign, other? Why the incessant refrain of "I want my country back?"
I mean, some of the Clinton hatred got pretty bizarre, but I was around during the Clinton years too, and it never got *this* bizarre. I mean, folks bashed him as a horndog, as corrupt, all sorts of things, but they never claimed they were *scared* of him or that they wanted to re-claim their country from him. But then, Clinton is white. And Obama is black. And that makes all the difference, even though people in Jesusland don't want to know that because then that would imply they were racist and they don't *feel* racist, why, they even have a black friend at work and have even invited him over for dinner once or twice! I declayah!
What they're *really* scared of is what white oil field workers weren't shy about saying back in the days when the first blacks came on board due to affirmative action. "Them niggers, they're taking all our jobs." And now "they" have taken the Presidency. It's all about white privilege. Whites deserve those jobs, how dare some darky take our jobs! But of course today racism is not socially acceptable, so the Tea Baggers and their ilk talk in code, while ordinary folk in Jesusland don't know why because they don't want to know why, but the fact that there is a President Obama makes them very, very uncomfortable, and quite eager to embrace Tea Bagger notions. So it goes.
-- Badtux the Southern Penguin
Fox News is hyperventilating 'cause Obama invited a scary black rapper to a poetry event! Nevermind that six months ago, Fox News said about this very same rapper, "Common", that he was "a "rap legend" whose "music is very positive." That was then, and this is now. Down the memory hole that "positive rap legend" stuff goes, now he's a scary black man to use to scare the tighty whities who watch Fox News, next thing you know they're gonna say that "Common" killed a man in Reno just to see'em die...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Birthers, deathers, sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrom, screeching ninnies of the right and left... people. Get a grip. Just get a grip. Whether you're the gang of left-wing lunatics at Corrente or a teabagger, reality simply *is*.
Look. I understand the disappointment that you folks at Corrente have with Obama. You forgot to look at the label on the back that said "Eisenhower Republican". Well, folks, Obama is the candidate you guys chose, he's doing exactly what he said he'd do in all his policy papers on his web site prior to his election, so you have no one to blame but yourself. In the meantime he's the Democratic President we have -- basically Eisenhower Jr. -- and not the Democratic President we need -- FDR reincarnated. But there's no way to get from point A to point B in 2012. There isn't. Attempting to primary Obama will simply end up electing some right wing lunatic as President. Every single one of the Republican candidates I've seen so far makes George W. Bush look like a socialist. Is that really what you want to do to America?! So quit with the deather conspiracy theories (Osama bin Laden is dead, alright, already), and the rest of the weird Obama conspiracy theories you keep messing around with, and live in the world we have, not some alternate universe where primarying a sitting president results in victory for your party.
As for folks on the right... people. Get a grip. All this after-birther stuff doubting the authenticity of Obama's long-form birth certificate makes you look like raving lunatics to the 90% of America who's satisfied that Obama is American. We have a way of handling these situations where you don't like a President. It's called a VOTE. Find yourself a good candidate for 2012, and get the most votes. It's called DEMOCRACY. I know it's a dirty, ugly business, but what's your alternative? Tyranny of the minority over the majority? Yeah, like that ever turns out well...
-- Badtux the PO'ed Penguin
So I understand that the Deathers are shouting, "Show us pictures of dead Osama bin Laden!". Uhm, no. Just no. If you want to verify that OBL is dead, there's plenty of ways to do so -- the most important being independent verification from people who are *NOT* the Obama administration. Navy Seals saw him die. His wife and remaining son saw him die. Plenty of people supposedly saw him die. If these people who supposedly saw him die all say they saw him die, well. Good 'nuff for me, just as I believed Bush when he said OBL pulled off 9/11 because once you got things verified from multiple sources, it's pretty damn hard to fake that shit.
But photographs? Dude. Photographs are so easy to fake it ain't even funny and they don't prove shit. There's only one reason to demand photographs of dead and bloody OBL, and that's to jack off to them. What, Deathers, you folks don't have porn shops in your towns? Sheesh!
-- Badtux the Rude Penguin
Obama releases his long-form birth certificate.
Will the release of this document change the mind of birthers? Of course not. World Nut Daily already doubled down on the crazy and announced, "Even Hawaii birth won't make Obama eligible". Other birthers like Oily Taitz swiftly followed suit. Because no document in the world will ever make Obama eligible to be President in their eyes, because no document in the world will ever turn Obama white.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Really. It's true. I read it in America's finest news source. Which has proven remarkably accurate in the past, yo.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Ezra Klein asks, "What is going to be done about the plight of those permanently unemployed because they're too young to retire but nobody will hire them because they're too old?".
Well, the Republicans have a plan for that too. Too young to retire but too old to work? It's the same basic plan as their retirement plan for the poor once Social Security is dismantled, as their health care plan for the bottom 98% of the population once health care reform and Medicaid are dismantled, and so forth. Don't get unemployed, and if you do, die quickly. Duh.
Not that Preznit Hopey Changey has any other plan, other than, well, hopey for changey. Or as Vice Preznit Pie-hole put it, "hang in there". Uhm, yeah. Hope is not a plan. Just sayin'.
So we have one party that's incompetently evil, and another party that's evilly incompetent. Sigh. WASF.
- Badtux the Snarkily Disgusted Penguin
Barack Obama's "deal" gives the Republicans two years of the tax cuts for millionaires that they wanted... but only one year of extended unemployment benefits that he wanted. And what are the odds that a Republican House is going to vote to extend those benefits again in one year?
I don't get it. It's as if Obama said, "here, I'll give you $2 if you give me $1." In what universe is that a fair deal or a reasonable compromise? Crap, if Obama was a poker player, he'd immediately show everybody his hand as soon as the dealer dealt it to him, then be baffled as to why he didn't win anything.
As Jazzbumpa is so fond of pointing out, WASF. I'm feeling rather down. Maybe it's just the holidays. I think I want to go camping in the desert for a week or two away from this lunacy, it's either that or ingest enough alcohol to make my liver scream, which is hardly the solution (alcohol is a depressant after all). Siiiiiigh!
-- Badtux the Baffled Penguin
Back in February 2008, I ripped into Obama's "health care plan" as published on his web site, and in passing noted that pretty much every policy I saw posted there was a right-wing policy -- that is, Obama was basically a Republican, just not part of the Republican Party because of that whole white hoods thingy. Everybody told me I was crazy, a black man just had to be a liberal because he was, well, black, just like Jesse Jackson!
Well, I think we're pretty much past the point where it's clear that, idiotic natterings from the right wing peanut gallery about "socialism" aside (where they accuse Obama of being "socialist" for continuing the same pro-big-business policies of George W. Bush including continuing Bush's bailouts of banks and auto companies), Obama is, well, a right-wing conservative. His economic policies are right-wing. His health care plan was a Republican plan, for cryin' out loud, he's even admitted that himself, that he took a Republican plan (RomneyCare) that was designed by the Heritage Foundation and pushed that upon America (all natterings about "socialist healthcare" aside). And of course there's his Catfood Commission, which is intent upon making even catfood too expensive as a source of protein for America by implementing right-wing "austerity" economics guaranteed to plunge the country into a Greater Depression (next up in my recipe list: rat etoufee over rice, it's tasty!). And finally... Krugman states what we bloggers have been saying for a couple of years now: Obama is a conservative. A paleo-conservative like Pat Buchanan or George H.W. Bush, not an insane neo-conservative like the Bush crowd, but a conservative nonetheless, and because conservative economic policies are incapable of dealing with a depression, probably a one-term President like Jimmy Carter (another conservative Democrat whose conservative economic policies of cutting the deficit and deregulating industry were incapable of handling the economic situation he found himself in).
The sad thing is that the Democratic Party will decide that the answer to electing a righty who is accused of being a socialist by Republicans will be to nominate someone even more right-wing than Obama. That’s how the Democratic Party seems to work. If you lose elections because your candidates are basically Republicans in drag and folks prefer their Republicans straight-up, why, double-up on the stupid!
Sigh. WASF.
- Badtux the Walking-oddly Penguin
And... hell freezing over here folks... agree with Ann Coulter.
The subject? Afghanistan as "Obama's war", which we're losing. The fact of the matter is that Obama ran on a platform of expanding U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and has in fact done so. Steel is right -- Obama now owns Afghanistan, even if the Chimperor got us there. And we're losing, for the simple reason that we have no achievable objective in Afghanistan and thus nothing to win.
The fact of the matter is that invading Afghanistan makes sense only if your intent is to make it part of your own empire, with your own people in charge. The last man to successfully conquer Afghanistan was Tamerlane, who succeeded in 1370 via the simple expedient of genocide of any areas that resisted and then putting his own governor in place to rule it as part of his own Timur Empire. Tamerlane had two advantages: 1) He didn't give a shit about the locals and had no problems slaughtering them to the last man, and 2) He didn't have supply lines. None. His army fed itself by seizing the food from the conquered folks, after all they didn't need it anymore (since they were dead, mostly). Every attempt to invade Afghanistan since has been to put a more pliant local leader into power, and every one of them has been a disaster, up to and including the current one.
In other words, unless we want to make Afghanistan the 51st state, there's nothing to "win" there, and thus by definition we're losing. Michael Steele was right. And Ann Coulter is right when in today's World Nut Daily she points out that Michael Steele was right. Hope is not a plan, and change is not a strategy, but those are pretty much the only two things Obama has deployed in Afghanistan that the Soviets and British didn't deploy before him. Will they make a difference? Not bloody well likely...
-- Badtux the Tongue-biting Penguin
Ranger notes that the U.S. has apparently killed 12 different #3 people in al-Qaeda during the course of the Afghan war.
Given that the last people to successfully conquer Afghanistan were the Mongols, who had the advantages of being able to live off the land (thus no supply train issues) as well as significantly greater combatant manpower than the U.S. or Soviet or British efforts (every Mongol was a warrior -- even the women and children -- so there were no non-combatants to defend), it seems likely that the only tactics that could succeed in Afghanistan would be low-tech tactics based upon flooding the countryside with horse-riding men armed with swords and spears and bows and arrows. Or somethin' like that. Whatevah. It's certainly clear that current tactics just aren't working...
Oh yeah, I forgot the current release from the Ministry of Truth. It appears that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan on January 20, 2009, rather than in October 2001 like I'd originally thought. The chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams this month. Please ignore the fact that the chocolate ration was 30 grams last month, that reality is no longer operative and all papers to that effect should be immediately disappeared down the Memory Hole...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Preznit Hopey Changey apparently has said fucking with Social Security benefits is on the table. Excuse me? People pay into this system all their lives so that it'll be there once they retire, and Preznit Hopey Changey wants to yank it right out from under people who are relying on it?
Of course, the right wing's response to Preznit Hopey Changey proposing basically dismantling the core of FDR's New Deal is... well, to call him a socialist, of course. Duh. What, you'd expect applause or somethin' from the Party of No, which has been trying to eliminate Social Security from the very minute that FDR rounded up the votes to pass it?!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Obama budget for 2011 cuts Federal spending/increases taxes by 2.5% of U.S. GDP.
You'll note that we're currently in an unemployment crisis caused by a collapse of consumption. One of the things that has kept the official unemployment rate under 15% (and real rate under 25%) is Federal stimulus spending. It appears to me that President Obama is proposing an ANTI-stimulus: Basically, whack consumption by 2.5% *more*. Which should have a similar effect upon unemployment rates, except in the opposite direction.
If this goes through in the 2011 budget year, expect 12.5% official unemployment by the end of that fiscal year. This is insane. It is as if these guys learned economics from Libertards spouting Hayek talking points. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement -- the Obama Administration has disappeared from the reality we live in, where 10%+ unemployment is a slow disaster, into some alternate Washington bubble universe where ponies shit rainbows and cutting consumption won't cause unemployment.
Reality. Not just a good idea. Wish our leaders had a clue about it.
-- Badtux the "Better leaders, please?" Penguin
It must be hard to be Paul Krugman. Time after time, he's right, and people just refuse to listen. Must be like being one of those old Hebrew prophets who made all these prophecies of shit that was going to happen, and everybody just looked at'em like they were crazy and said "nuh-uh, won't happen!" and then when it did, they got mad at the prophet for, well, telling them what was gonna happen. Obama's endorsement of Reaganism tonight? Paul says, I told you so. And I told you so too. Though my record is nowhere near as good as Paul Krugman's, I ain't an idiot, unlike the morons who thought that somehow a conservative black middle class attorney was the Great Liberal Hope.
So it goes...
-- Badtux the "I told you so" Penguin
To all the Obama-voting librals who voted for Obama in the primaries because they thought Obama was a liberal and would govern as a liberal: You're a moron and should STFU. I was pointing out as early as January 2008 that Obama's policies were liberal only compared to those of George W. Bush, but crap, Ghenghis Khan's policies would have been liberal compared to George W. Bush. In January 2008 I pointed out that Obama's health care plan was basically a subsidy for insurance companies, that Obama's views on topics such as gay marriage, gays in the military, the death penalty, and so forth were not likely to be any different than John McCain's views on such, and that Obama's strategy regarding Iraq and Afghanistan was to be George W. Bush, only smarter. I advised you then that if you wanted a real liberal President, you should vote for Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards in the primaries, the only real liberals who were running (albeit John Edwards later sorely disappointed me by hiking the Appalachian trail with a hottie).
But did you listen? NOOOOOooo. You took a fundamentally conservative black middle class politician -- and if you know the black middle class like I do, you know that they're VERY conservative about everything except government assistance for minorities and the poor -- and put him into office because he was, well, black, and black means liberal, right? To those of you who voted for Obama because you wanted a sane, basically conservative politician in charge, congratulations, that's what you got. For those who made the racist assumption that because Obama is black, that automatically made him a liberal, and voted for him based on that racist assumption rather than the fundamentally conservative contents of his web site and speeches: Congratulations, you're a moron. Report for duty on the Failboat immediately for treatment for Obama Derangement Syndrome, which, apparently, afflicts left-wing morons just as much as it afflicts right-wing morons.
-- Badtux the Derangement-Observin' Penguin
Gosh, I wonder why that is? Hmm, here is a typical Southern town welcoming the new Sheriff Obama into town:
-- Badtux the "No racism here, nuh uh!" Penguin
This morning I opened up my web browser, cruised to one of my favorite blogs, and saw... "President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize". I laughed. "There they go, posting links to articles at The Onion again!" Because after all, why in the world would President Obama get a Nobel Peace Prize? It isn't as if peace has suddenly broken out on his watch, after all. We're still in Iraq, and still in Afghanistan, and he hasn't brokered a peace deal between two seemingly-intractable enemies like Carter did with Egypt and Israel. So there was no reason in the universe why I would go to a web site today and see "President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize", it had to be a joke.
Except, of course, it wasn't.
So I can understand why people would be surprised, and maybe a bit dubious. I mean, this was so unexpected -- and probably undeserved -- that any rational human being's first reaction to being told the news should have been "No! Are you reading the Ironic Times again, and the next paragraph is about how he's brought peace to Iraq and Afghanistan?" The reaction of the right-wing blogosphere, on the other hand, has been utterly atrocious. Whether you agree with the Nobel committee's choice or not, it is a great honor for the President and for the nation that he is President of. The only reasonable negative reaction even if you disagree with Obama's policies, is polite acknowledgement and then STFU. Instead, they keep nattering on and on and on and on about how this is bad for Obama, puts pressure on him, yada yada yada. What a buncha baloney, there's only one group putting pressure on Obama right now, and that's the Democratic base that wants him to act like a Democrat rather than like a Republican Lite. What, you think he got up in front of the nation and did that speech about health care because of Republican pressure? Oh STFU, it was because the Democratic base was rebelling and driving his positives down into the toilet. It's not the Republicans that Obama is whacking with a baseball bat to try to get them in line. It is the Democratic base. The Nobel is irrelevant to that. It might give the Democratic base some level of encouragement, but in the end, Nobel prizes don't vote.
In the meantime, at the moment I feel like I'm living within an Onion article. But a good one, not one like this one. Hopefully the feeling will stay for a while...
-- Badtux the Quietly Acknowledging Penguin
