Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
The image is from Pat Dollard, "Obama’s Race War: “Wake Up, Conservatives”, Wake Up Americans." I can't tell you how perfectly the title of that post sums up how I see this administration. I had generally nice things to say about the president's address to students today. I like the message of personal responsiblity. It's just not authentic coming from this White House snake-oil salesman.
Even more disturbing than learning that the White House and NEA are using the arts to address specific issues, is to learn what was discussed on this new conference call. Rosenbaum mentions that there was much talk of “leveraging federal dollars” to get artists and cultural organizations involved in social-service projects.
Leveraging federal dollars? This is the problem with marrying issue specific topics, like health care and energy, with a group that is funded by tax dollars; it increases the potential of taxpayer-funded propaganda.
Another historic, monumental speech from the 44th President of the United States. He's averaging about one of these every three weeks now, isn't he?
To say that this President is overexposed is an understatement. He was overexposed six months ago when he let his kids appear on the cover of Jann Wenner's trashy supermarket celeb mag. I'm not sure what prefix to use, but "over-" does not sufficiently describe a President who is now doing 30-second spots for George Lopez's new late night show on TBS. Seriously.
I'm just glad the tea parties are having such a phenomenal effect, and that the historical abomination of Obama 44 is inceasingly looking like a one term deal. January 2013 can't come fast enough for this country; although, in consolation, I'm confident that Obama's inexperience and overreaching are sealing his rep as the worst president ever.
Of the ten minutes I caught, I'm not thrilled by President Obama's exhortation to succeed for "the country" and to do new things, like volunteering. But other than that, he made agood speech with a powerful message of personal responsibility. I agree with Newt Gingrich that students should be encouraged to read it. There's a powerful utility in sharing those stories of hard work and perseverance, and I imagine with Obama the drill will go down better coming from a "brother," especially in disadvantaged communities.
Reading the text yesterday, Joanne Jacobs called it an excellent speech; and she addressed the concerns I noted above:
Should he tell students they have a duty to their country — not just to themselves — to become the problem solvers and innovators of the future? It’s not what I would call a radical idea. These are old-fashioned American values.
Yes, they are old-fashioned. But we can't take those ideas away from the personal context in which they are presented. Parents don't like this president pitching personal responsiblity to them because they don't like his agenda of radical change. It doesn't help when Obama's allies in the entertainment/media industry push authoritarian "pledge drives" or when the White House itself launches "snitch" campaigns to track dissenters. Previous presidents did not have that baggage. So the Obama speech to students can never be as effective as was true for President Reagan or President H.W. Bush. Obama's HopeAndChange agenda has created an unprecedented regime of conformity, and the administration's "goals for students" learning packet indeed takes on a disturbing "Obama Youth" aura amid the ugly school-age intolerance the president has engendered.
It turns out that Charles Krauthammer, speaking of Van Jones during Thursday's Fox News All-Stars, suggested that:
I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist.
Well, it's not that pathetic, at least not to all the young people enthralled with communist paraphernalia (Che chic comes to mind, but Obama-mania is Soviet-like in its cult of personality). These are the same young people who routinely demonstrate under the neo-Stalinist banner. I write about it all the time. I think that, actually, the further we're removed historically from the brutality of Soviet rule during the Cold War, combined with the popularization of a pseudo-hip antiwar-postmodernism, there's no real recoil against the idea of Marxist-Leninist ideologies. Folks even laugh when they hear the word "communism," since that's, well, ancient history for many. Now it's "progressive" to praise Castro's healthcare regime, and that's not just by idealistic college kids, but by members of Congress!
It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy and our other institutions. Does Charles not realize, for example, that Obama's friend Bill Ayers — who proudly calls himself "a small 'c' communist" — was in 2008 elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers? (See Sol Stern's profile of Ayers and education, here). I'm not sure "pathetic" is the right word, but what is a perilous intellectual anachronism is the belief that the communist threat ended 18 years ago.
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that "we had a communist in the U.S. government." To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the "green jobs czar." Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss. There's nothing covert about him. He didn't snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that's why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the "green jobs" initiative is an important part of the hard Left's agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract — under such mushy labels as "social justice" and "green jobs." That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.
What's interesting to me is how our netroots "progressives" see Van Jones as a perfectly decent guy - I mean a really, really good guy! (That's what Baratunde Thurston argued last night at his excreble post, "When Will This White House Learn You Cannot Negotiate With Terrorists?")
I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.
Yeah, formidable. "Hammering" Jane also had kind words to say of the Baratunde screed, "It's an incredible piece." She also likes Carl Pope's allegations of a high-tech lynching of Van Jones.
And recall the fawning over at Gawker, "here we have a radical youth turned respectable liberal ... And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people ..."
See, he's just a "great guy." Except that, frankly, Jones isn't a "great guy." He's a mean, nasty guy, with a long history of anti-Americanism and hard-left-wing agitation. He is, thought, the real thing - a communist, and that fact has leftists slobbering all over him. That's what I mean when I say there are "no enemies on the left." By calling themselves "progressives," today's neo-communists seek respectability.
For far too long, Americans have tolerated encroachments on their liberty; expansions in the reach, size, and power of government; and the incremental abrogation of Constitutional restrictions on same because it was going on clandestinely, behind closed doors (below the radar might be a better way of putting it). It’s also why I said a while back that Obama’s ascension just might’ve been the best thing that ever could have happened to this country ....
To clean out a rats’ nest, you first have to be able to see the damned rats. Jones will slink off to another sub-surface “community organizer” type job, perhaps even on the federal payroll, and another just like him will take his place ... quietly, without much in the way of fanfare. It’s up to the rest of us to keep our eyes open for it — to stay awake, so the Democrat Socialist rats won’t find it so easy to steal what little remains of our freedom, and remake what’s left of our Constitutional republic.
Tomorrow your BFF Barack will be speaking to all the school children in the land! He has asked me to speak to you tonight about what he wants you to do to prepare it ...
And remember: if you hear anybody saying bad or nasty things about Barack, please send me an e-mail with their names and addresses at: reportbadpeoplenow@gmail.com
Joe The Plumber (Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) has confirmed with organizers of the Tea Party Express that he will speak at Tuesday's Tea Party Express rally in Brighton, Michigan.
Organizers of the Tea Party Express bus tour arriving in Washington later this week planned their route to go though Democratic congressional districts they consider vulnerable.
"What we did was take a map of the United States and then we went head and pin pointed the members of congress that merited our attention and then we looked at those that might be politically vulnerable," said Joe Wierzbicki, a strategist with the conservative PAC Our Country Deserves Better, who are organizing the cross country Tea Party Express tour.
Topping the group's target list in the Senate is current Democrat, and former moderate Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The Tea Party Express makes four stops in Pennsylvania later this week.
"Arlen Specter has always been a top priority for us, because as long as you had a prominent Republican who was providing the Democrats the means to push through this massive expansion of government, that certainly made him a top priority," says Wierzbicki.
Other Democratic senators on the groups list include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Connecticut's Chris Dodd. The tour made five stops in Nevada, and plans three stops in Connecticut.
On the House side, first-term Michigan Democrats Mark Schauer and Gary Peters are on the group's target list. The tour plans four Michigan stops.
"We decided to do this tour across the country, mobilize the people in these communities, so that subsequent to this tour we can then go back and start prioritizing these targets for the express purpose of running ads and grassroots campaigns to defeat these members of Congress," said Wierzbicki.
The Our Country Deserves Better PAC says the Tea Party Express is not a partisan group.
When the "tea party" movement kicked off in April to protest record federal spending bills, trillion-dollar deficits and higher tax burdens, its members were fiercely independent and opposed any suggestion that they bond with a larger umbrella group, preferring to work within their local communities.
But that go-it-alone approach is changing as a result of the war over health care, and the Tea Party Express tour is leading the way.
The Tea Party Express - a caravan of buses, speakers and entertainers who have been holding protest rallies in cities and towns across the country - is heading to Washington, where on Saturday, up to 50,000 demonstrators are expected to march on the Capitol in a full-scale political offensive to persuade lawmakers to reject the health care overhaul bills that are pending in the House and Senate.
"What we are seeing across the country is not only increasingly larger crowds but a greater determination to hold members of Congress to their opposition to the health care plan. They are angry and feel they've been ignored, and they don't like what Congress has done," Joe Wierzbicki, national coordinator of the Tea Party Express, said in a telephone interview as his 45-foot bus cruised through Texas last week on a 17-day, 34-rally tour that will end in Washington on Saturday.
A large force of conservative and libertarian organizations is helping sponsor the event, including Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, the National Taxpayers Union, Young Americans for Liberty, the Ayn Rand Center, Heartland Institute, Free Republic, Institute for Liberty, the Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks officials said. FreedomWorks, headquartered in Washington and chaired by former Rep. Dick Armey mobilizes volunteers for conservative causes.
"The politicians in Washington who think this movement is 'astroturf' had better think again. This is the grass roots coming alive," said Dennis E. Whitfield, executive vice president of the American Conservative Union. "This is beginning to take root across the country. This is for real."
Breaking news from New Lenox/Joliet… the sheriff’s office is reporting to us that the crowd estimate for the rally here is 10,000+ and they are shutting down a portion of Interstate 80 for traffic control do to the massive influx of people.
From the Los Angeles Times, "Obama Is Fast Losing White Voters' Support":
After a summer of healthcare battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract.
New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites -- including Democrats and independents -- who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.
Among white Democrats, Obama’s job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It has dropped by 9 points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women -- all groups that will be targeted by both parties in next year's midterm elections.
"While Obama has a lock on African Americans, his support among white voters seems to be almost in a free fall," said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.
Strategists in both parties blame Obama's decline on growing discontent with his policy agenda, particularly after a month of often-rowdy debate over his proposed healthcare overhaul, in which some conservatives accused him of socialism. Obama's ratings seem likely to rise again if he wins passage of healthcare legislation this fall.
But the drop in support among whites also comes as some conservatives have stoked controversies that have the potential to further erode Obama's standing among centrists -- including some controversies that resulted from White House stumbles.
The piece reviews most of the latest flops at the White House, starting with the Van Jonesdebacle. The larger lesson is the realization among the main core of the voting electorate that this presidency is not only off the tracks, but that the destination was to Looneyville in the first place.
President Obama's speeches have by now become deadening displays of serious sameness. What was once uplifting exhortations of soaring rhetorical promise are now routine but crass appeals for the public to save the Democrats' hard left agenda. Fewer and fewer people remain enthralled by the promising rhetoric and are now making straighforward interest-based calculations on whether to give the president the benefit of the doubt.
The key is not so much what happens this week, when Obama gives his address tothe nation. What's important is that the administration learn from its mistakes so far. Why Obama thinks he'll sway opinion on the public option is unclear. It's not like the conservatives are going to all of a sudden abandon the tea parties and the coordinated media and grassroots campaign of political opposition. Obama needs some kind of effective policy of triangulation. The hardline radicals at the base of the Democratic Party can whine all they want, but they've got nowhere else to go. Perhaps a few primary challenges will go their way, but the record of these so far is unspectacular. They'll be back in the Obama camp in due time. That leaves the broad middle of the electorate that the administration is now losing, and the hard right that's now driving the debate.
Conservative activists have already held a funeral for ObamaCare. And last month the administration began shifting the debate to "insurance reform" (and not "universal coverage"). Perhaps some additionaltalking points on liberating markets might go a long way in restoring receptivity for the message. Giving up altogether would be a disaster for the Democrats, although Obama's new talk of entitlement reform could be a signal that he's ready to move on from the healtcare albatross.
Either way, conservatives have scored huge victories. We'll see in 2010 not just a midterm repudiation of the Democrats, but perhaps an electoral earthquake on the scale of 1994.
The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the Administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness. I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning, and judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.
Beck's creds are skyrocketing, by the way. Politico's got a new piece out, "Glenn Beck Up, Left Down and Van Jones Defiant." The article's mostly a summary of the news that's been circling around today, but I love this passage:
"If Jones left under pressure from the Obama administration then we are in for a very long and painful four years,” said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a political science professor at Princeton University. “I would hate to think that Glenn Beck can simply shout down any member of the administration he chooses to target.”
Actuallly, Professor Lacewell shouldn't "hate to think" any such thing - that is, not if she's an advocate for a vigorous press as presidential watchdog. Glenn Beck has been doing for weeks what the mainstream press should have been doing all along: Shining a spotlight on the administration's staffers, their policies, and the history (and as we can see, Beck's not taking a breather just yet). Glenn Reynold's has more on the Politico's piece, here.
Another important resource has been World Net Daily, an outlet that's getting less kudos than it should for its role in bringing down Jones. Joseph Farah has a piece up right now that's worth a look, "WND Brings Down the 'Red Czar'." As Farah notes, "While talk radio and cable television picked up WND's reporting and increased the pressure on the administration to cut Jones loose, there was no significant coverage of the scandal by the major U.S. news media until last week!"
That's an extremely important fact, and it's a point that's only going to become more significant as the traditional "objective press" goes the way of the dinasaur.
The forced resignation of White House Marxist Van Jones has triggered one of the most vicious left-wing reactions I've seen since Barack Obama took office. Everywhere we look, commentators are attacking concerned Americans and rightroots bloggers as "neoconservative ... crazies: Birthers, Death Panel Pushers, and their ilk" (or some close variation).
David Weigel's piece at the Washington Independent is sympathetic to these arguments. He argues that the right's defeat of Jones represents "a crucial and possibly educational victory for the wing of the conservative and libertarian movement that has tried, without much success, to paint environmental activists like Jones as anti-capitalist radicals less interested in the health of the planet than in a well-disguised radical agenda."
Weigel makes it sound as if defeating Jones was a monumental challenge; and it would have been without the work of Glenn Beck, Jim Hoft and a number of others who have hammered away at Obama's Marxist green-jobs czar. (The mainstream press just won't report on a Marxist-Truther adviser to the president who attacks Republicans as assholes. Nope, that's just not news. The real enemies are the conservatives.)
But few episodes in recent months are roiling the left as much as Jones' ouster. A really interesting piece is at Jack & Jill Politics, "When Will This White House Learn You Cannot Negotiate With Terrorists?" The author, Baratunde Thurston, suggests that he's been away from politics for personal and professional reasons, and in returning to the polarizing debates he sees a country that's "clearly lost its damn mind":
I turned on one cable station to hear people demanding President Obama prove he’s an American citizen, an insane movement led by an Israeli citizen. I switched channels to see another group screeching in fear that Obama’s health care proposal would institute death panels to kill grandma. On yet another station, Glenn Beck accuses this president of having a deep-seated hatred for half of himself. Flip again to find parents removing their children from school because they don’t want their kids exposed to Obama’s socialist indoctrination. And yesterday, Green Jobs Czar Van Jones resigned after extreme pressure from right wing groups and extreme tepidness from the White House that hired him to do his very important work.
Too often, this White House has sent the signal that it seeks common ground and conciliation with parties interested in its total destruction. From my point of view, negotiating with ignorance, fear, hate and irrationality is insane. For example, when a major Republican figure in the health care negotiations spreads the death panel lie (Grassley), you see him for what he is, realize you’re dealing with a group of psychopaths, and reset the objectives. “Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be? Cool. Good to know what we’re dealing with. Thanks for your time. We won’t be needing your services anymore. We’re taking our ball and playing somewhere else.” Negotiations require trust and trust assumes that all parties are not completely batshit crazy.
I realize I’m lumping a variety of “opposition” camps together: birthers, deathers, those who accuse the president of racism and those who accuse him of socialism. I’m grouping them because to me they all come from the same place. They’re engaging in a form of terrorism. They are using psychological violence (and occasionally the threat of real violence) to pursue a political objective, and in so doing, inflicting harm upon non-combatants.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the movies, it’s that “The United States of America does not negotiate with terrorists.” Yet this White House is willing to let these psychological terrorists set the terms of the debate and negotiate from their insane positions. One group of people is trying to talk about co-pays. The other thinks the president is a secret Kenyan. One group of people sees the creation of domestic, sustainable jobs as a cornerstone of the 21st century economy. The other thinks the president is going to murder your grandmother. This is not legitimate political discourse and to make decisions acknowledging terms so far apart in their reality is just plain stupid.
Right.
It's been said many times now, but leftists really don't like freewheeling democratic debate. When they lose control of the message, when their program of "hope and change" is revealed for the radical counterculturalism that it is, they attack and smear their opponents as political terrorists.
Just the thought of that meme is pretty disgusting. It hasn't even been ten years since 9/11 and the true meaning of Islamic jihad's bloodthirsty fanaticism has now been obscured and forgotten. Now it's regular people, taking to the streets to express anger at our tin-eared president, who're branded as "enemy combatants." (One more reason folks are getting pissed at the Democrats in power.)
Thurston goes on to argue that Van Jones was one of the good guys. "A really, really good guy." According to Thurston, Jones used his education and "passion" to combat police brutality and "wasteful incarceration." Jones fought to build communities of "hope" in response to "climate crisis." Jones had a vision for action, etc. He was a savior in the Hope-and-Change mold. Yet, the administration failed him:
This White House, this administration and this president failed Van, failed its supporters and failed to honor the efforts of millions that got them into office in the first place. What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it? When will this White House realize that nothing it does will ever be acceptable to the loud-mouthed, ignorant minority? When will it learn that you cannot negotiate with terrorists??
You know, we see this kind of talk time and time again from folks on the contemporary left. There is a strain of disbelief that turns to anger when Democratic-leftists are confronted by the fact that Middle America is rejecting their agenda. It's been building for some time. And it's ugly. When the tea parties started building steam folks like Janeane Garofalo attacked concerned citizens as racist "teabaggers." For months the left-wing blogs and their media enablers have been slurring the grassroots protests as "Astroturfed." And this meme continues to hold sway among the radicals despite overwhelming documentation that the truly staged demonstrations are those sponsored by Organizing for America and its SEIU thugs and AARP frontrow seatwarmers.
And as we've seen this week, the GOP's rank-and-file are being attacked as unhinged "crazies" mounting a political program known as "Operation Monkeyshit."
So, with Van Jones' downfall the left is alleging that conservatives are "political terrorists."
What is clearly missing among folks like Baratunde and the mainstream press is the uncomfortable truth that Van Jones is in fact not a nice guy. He was self-described revolutionary communist up until a few years ago; he signed on to the 9/11 Truth movement by his own volition; he's attacked American foreign policy as "imperialist" and the utlimate source of global human rights opppression; he's slurred Republicans as "assholes"; he's was arrested in 1992 as a violent agitator during the Los Angeles riots; he's alleged that "white polluters" have destroyed inner-city communities; and he produced a violent anti-Iraq-war CD compilation album narrated by Mumia Abu Jamal, the infamous Black Panther thug who was convicted in 1981 for murdering a Philadelphia police officer.
Babalú blog has posted the video of Jones arguing that "only 'suburban white kids' shoot up schools" (referring to the Columbine Massacre); and the post concludes with this:
But the Dems still love this guy and shame on us they say for criticizing this Man, who also happens to be on Times top 100 with the Jonas Brothers, ....
So do you think that the MSM has reported all of this? Try ... NOPE! Oh, and don't expect to hear anything about this guy on the leftist blogs either....
What sickens me is that these liberal pudwackers have the nerve to criticize Beck, yet this wanker gets a pass. Oy vay!
I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.
Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans "assholes." I'm pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.
So where are all the statements defending Van Jones by those who were willing to exploit him when it served their purpose? Why aren't they standing up and defending one of their own, who has done nothing that probably the majority of people in the Democratic party haven't done at one time or another? Is he no longer "one of their own?"
The veal crate is a wooden restraining device that is the veal calf's permanent home. It is so small (22" x 54") that the calves cannot turn around or even lie down and stretch and is the ultimate in high-profit, confinement animal agriculture.(1) Designed to prevent movement (exercise), the crate does its job of atrophying the calves' muscles, thus producing tender "gourmet" veal.
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About 14 weeks after their birth, the calves are slaughtered. The quality of this "food," laden with chemicals, lacking in fiber and other nutrients, diseased and processed, is another matter. The real issue is the calves' experience. During their brief lives, they never see the sun or touch the Earth. They never see or taste the grass. Their anemic bodies crave proper sustenance. Their muscles ache for freedom and exercise. They long for maternal care. They are kept in darkness except to be fed two to three times a day for 20 minutes.
The restis a long screed basically whining about how the progressive left is getting f**ked by the Beltway Democratic power set. But check out the vile discourse she spouts at the post:
The truth is -- they've all been sucked into insulating the White House from liberal critique, and protecting the administration's ability to carry out a neoliberal agenda that does not serve the interests of their members. They spend their time calculating how to do the absolute minimum to retain their progressive street cred and still walk the line of never criticizing the White House.
Liberals are told that the public option is an acceptable sacrifice such that we don't repeat the 54 seat swing to the GOP after health care failed in 1994. The President told Progressive members of Congress that they should think about the poor Blue Dogs (who by happy coincidence are sucking up all the health care lobbying dollars) who might face tough elections in 2010.
Well, now that you bring it up, let's talk about 1994. The election came on the heels of NAFTA, which demoralized the liberal base and depressed turnout. Even as the GOP works hard to rile up their teabaggers base and push turnout numbers up for the 2010 midterm, Democrats are watching the public option die and seeing Van Jones thrown into the meat grinder so Blue Cross and the Blue Dogs can get a room. Telling progressives to go Cheney themselves to save the Blue Dogs could have horrendous consequences on downticket races across the country.
I just want to remind folks that "Hammering" Jane is fully representative of the hardest of today's hardline netroots base. These are the "progressives" who are pissed at Obama on issues from Afghanistan to the public option. Just one look at Hamsher's rage, combined with her solidarity for "Bay Area Marxist/Truther/Mumia-supporting race hustler-turned-environmental justice guru Van Jones," gives you a pretty good idea of exactly what's at stake in the contemporary politics of polarization in America today.
Guess who's not pleased about Van Jones middle-of-the-night-on-a-holiday-weekend resignation? Perhaps you never would have seen this one coming, but no other MSNBC "Countdown" host and provocateur Keith Olbermann himself.
Bitter and seeing red? Perhaps. In a post on the Daily Kos dated Sept. 6, Olbermann urged the half-crazed liberal Kos readers to go digging for dirt on Fox News host Glenn Beck, Beck's radio producer Stu Burguiere and Fox News president Roger Ailes. (h/t Morgen of Verum Serum) ...
Olbermann said he plans to put forth his formal plans to go after Beck on his Sept. 8 show.
"Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enablers, Ailes (even though Ailes' power was desperately undercut when he failed to pull off his phony ‘truce' push)," Olbermann wrote.
The irony here is that Van Jones was drummed from his office because it is unacceptable in American politics to be a Truther. It is considered too embarrassing and too nutty and ruins one's political credibility.
And where does Olby go to seek his vengeance?
To the Daily Kos, which put up an announcement that no Truther statements or comments or petitions were permitted on the site, and would be deleted immediately, because Trutherism was too embarrassing and too nutty for the site's political credibility.
So, you know, Van Jones got pushed out of office by the same "McCarthyite tactics" that Kos employs to keep his site free of Trutherism.
What is creeping fascism when applied to a high government official is not, apparently, fascism, creeping or otherwise, when used against a common citizen of no public importance posting on a stupid blog.
Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that the resignation of White House green jobs adviser Van Jones is a "loss for the country."
The outspoken Democrat and former presidential candidate vigorously defended Jones, who resigned in the wake of criticism over his past statements and associations -- including his past support for a group that believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think he was brought down," Dean told "FOX News Sunday," saying he just spoke to Jones. "I think it's a loss for the country."
Dean pointed to Jones' credentials as a Yale Law School graduate and best-selling author.
Though Jones signed a 2004 statement calling for an investigation into possible Bush administration involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, Dean said Jones didn't realize what he was signing at the time.
"I don't think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9/11," he said.
But 911Truth.org spokesman Mike Berger, whose group sponsored the statement, earlier told FOX News that Jones knew what he was signing.
Republicans swiftly called for Jones' resignation following the discovery that he signed the petition.
As I noted last night, "it's mostly been Glenn Beck on Fox News, and a number of top bloggers, especially Gateway Pundit," who did the heavy lifting in bringing down White House Marxist Van Jones.
It turns out the Bill Kristol made the point on this morning's Fox News Sunday:
Apparently, all that needs to happen to provoke a White House Administration official's resignation is: a bunch of blowhards and crazies find something someone once said that was once extreme.
As President Obama's senior advisers gathered at Blair House at the end of July for a two-day review of their first six months in office, what was meant to be a breath-catching moment of reflection was colored by a sense of unease.
To a sleep-deprived White House staff, the achievements since taking office that chilly morning of Jan. 20 seemed self-evident. The agenda of necessity they had carried out to stabilize the economy was rapidly making room for Obama's agenda of choice: changing the way Americans receive health care, generate and consume energy, and learn in public school classrooms.
But opinion polls showed support for the president and his policies dipping sharply, and the disheartening numbers had shaken the confidence of some of Obama's staff. Vice President Biden addressed the anxiousness when the Cabinet and senior staff met in the State Dining Room in the White House residence the next morning.
"Did you really think this was going to be easy?" Biden said, according to one participant.
The slide has only quickened. Emerging from an angry August recess, Obama is weakened politically and faces growing concerns, particularly from within his own party, over his strength as a leader. Dozens of interviews this summer in six states -- from Maine to California -- have revealed a growing angst and disappointment over the administration's present course.
Democratic officials and foot soldiers, who have experienced the volatile public mood firsthand, are asking Obama to take a more assertive approach this fall. His senior advisers say he will, beginning with his Wednesday address to Congress on health care.
His challenge, however, is more fundamental. Obama built his successful candidacy and presidency around a leadership style that seeks consensus. But he is entering a period when consensus may not be possible on the issues most important to his administration and party. Whatever approach he takes is likely to upset some of his most ardent supporters, many of whom are unwilling to compromise at a time when Democrats control the White House and Congress.
"Until last week, he was still trying to play ball with the Republicans who said, 'We're going to bring you down,' " said Karen Davis, 42, a musician from Jersey City who raised funds for Obama last year. "Now I'm thinking, 'This isn't what I voted for.' "
With the Jones resignation, it's going to be a feeding frenzy on the right. Who'll be next? And for the pissed off take on this on the left, see Gawker, "Who Is Van Jones?":
And for both his activism and his charm he was rewarded with a White House job with the Council on Environmental Quality. He was tasked with making sure stimulus money for green jobs actually went to green jobs. And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people. He is the sort of person we were all praying Obama would bring with him to DC, instead of Larry Summers.
And that is one of the reasons he is now being ritually and savagely demonized. To understand why and how he's being demonized, we have to look at the way information and misinformation makes it way from crazy blogs to crazy pundits to crazy citizens to, suddenly, the non-crazy regular media.
The "why" is simple: he is a genuine left-wing liberal with a White House job. He is black. He used to be radical, and probably still has radical sympathies (you know, caring about poor black people and all that). He is, in other words, fucking terrifying, if you frame his story right.
Yeah. Just the kinda guy we all want in the White House. Right.
An adviser to President Barack Obama resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.
Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs," has been linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.
Mr. Jones issued an apology on Thursday. When asked the next day whether Mr. Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Mr. Jones "continues to work in the administration."
President Obama's environmental adviser Van Jones resigned from his post late Saturday evening after he came under fire for a series of inflammatory statements he made about Republicans, the White House said early Sunday morning.
Jones' "asshole" rebuke really is the least of it, in my opinion. It's been the constant flow of information about Jones' hardline radicalism and extremist associations that rightly did him in; and it's not primarily the "GOP" that forced the resignation. Actually, it's mostly been Glenn Beck on Fox News, and a number of top bloggers especially Gateway Pundit, but also a number of the big right-wing websites.
Indeed, Gateway Pundit, also commenting on the NBC title, says, "Let the biased headlines begin - NBC says its the GOP's fault!"
In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics, Van Jones resigned as the White House’s environmental jobs “czar” on Saturday.
The key is "conservative critics." This really is an amazing victory for right-wing bloggers and media pundits. There's been a few prominent Republicans calling for hearings or for Jones' resignation, but it's the grassroots that deserves the lion's share of credit.
A number of polls have shown declining support for the American military mission to Afghanistan. CBS News recently reported that "Four in 10 now say they want U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan decreased ..." And CNN survey last week reported that "Fifty-seven percent of Americans ... say they oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, with 42 percent supporting the military mission."
As is always the case in ongoing military conflicts, the key item is the percentage who favor an immediate troop withrawal. And there's little support for that. As Rasmussen reported yesterday, just 20 percent support an immediate pullout, and "Fifty-two percent (52%) see no need for a withdrawal or a timetable right now." Still, there's indeed been a downward drift in public support, and the hard lefties are pushing the meme that the Obama administration's at odds with public opinion and it's time to end the deployment (see here, here, and here).
Derrick Crowe, at Firedoglake goes so far as to say, "We Know Failure When We See It." He's arguing specifically that "counterinsurgency" in Afghanistan has collapsed:
In other words, the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan has been a total failure.
Reports indicate General McChrystal will soon ask for 20,000 more troops for this debacle. The President and Congress should say no and end our military involvement in Afghanistan as quickly as possible.
Check the link. Crowe's basic case is that the U.S. has failed to gain the support of the ethnic Pashtuns, and continued efforts to that effect are doomed to failure.
But Crowe is blinded by his classic leftist antiwar hatred, and his analysis can't be taken seriously. The fact is, of course, that counterinsurgency is a key element of the larger strategic context of U.S. policy in the region. According to Fotini Christia and Michael Semple, "Flipping the Taliban: How to Win in Afghanistan":
The core rationale for the current NATO mission in Afghanistan is to ensure that the Afghan authorities can prevent the Taliban's al Qaeda allies from exploiting Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations. If they want to extricate themselves from the insurgency and become part of Afghanistan's new deal, Taliban commanders will have to demonstrate that they have broken with al Qaeda.
Also, Spencer Ackerman recently questioned the strategic rationale for sending additional troops, "Wait, We Need How Many More Troops For Afghanistan?" He argues there's no "consensus" on the need for additional forces.
Of all the shortcomings of the Afghan government and its NATO allies, it is the failure to provide security for ordinary Afghans that has most prevented large-scale reconciliation in the country. The Taliban have worked diligently to make the costs of reconciliation prohibitively high. "It is amazing to see how sensitive and scared everyone in Kandahar is to talk about the Taliban and the government reconciling," an Afghan scholar researching the reconciliation conundrum told us in April. "There is no [government] strategy in place to defy antipeace and antireconciliation attempts." Indeed, so far, the weakness of the Karzai administration and the steady spread of insecurity across the country's Pashtun areas, in the east and the south, have boosted the position of those insurgents who favor continuing the conflict.
In order for reconciliation to work, ordinary Afghans will have to feel secure. The situation on the ground will need to be stabilized, and the Taliban must be reminded that they have no prospect of winning their current military campaign. If the Afghan government offers reconciliation as its carrot, it must also present force as its stick -- hence, the importance of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but also, in the long term, the importance of building up Afghanistan's own security forces. Reconciliation needs to be viewed as part of a larger military-political strategy to defeat the insurgency, like the one Washington has pursued recently in Iraq: win over the insurgents who are willing to reconcile, and kill or capture those who are not.
The reference to Iraq is significant. When the U.S. lost control of Iraq's security the radical left's nilihist contigents smelled victory for "the resistance." Fortunately, the administration made strategic adjustments, and under the Petraeus surge we turned things around. As military security improved, so did public support. According to a Wall Street Journal survey on the Iraq war earlier this year, "the public is mostly satisfied with the results, with 53% saying the war has been successful, up from 43% in July 2008."
Success matters. As the U.S. beefs up its contingents in Afghanistan, and as it continues its work in "flipping the Taliban," public opinion will hold steady. The worst outcome will be for the Obama administration to cave to the antiwar defeatists and order a downturn in U.S. engagement. Should that happen, international security will deteriorate, and President Obama will become known as the first U.S. president to lose a war in the post-9/11 era.
The MoveOn finger-biter remains at large this weekend. Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star has the audio tape of the 911 call to the Ventura County Sheriff on Wednesday night. Also, here's the report from KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Search Is On For Suspected Finger Biter":
