Last week Joe Scarborough played lap dog, sucking up to Rush Limbaugh and bashing other journalists for attributing a fake quote to him without checking it out. He went so far as to say they should be ashamed and apologize. Didn't matter to him that Limbaugh has said numerous OTHER racist remarks over his career. Nope, Limbaugh had been defamed and somebody had to pay!
Well Joe Scarborough just blatantly lied, probably due to his propensity to read wingnut blogs and watch FoxNews, and said White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Chairman Mao and Mother Teresa were her "two favorite philosophers". Here is what she actually said in context.
And then the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?" You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else's.
Now even if you were to believe that she was serious in saying that Mother Teresa was a political philospher, the context clearly shows that Dunn did not say they were her two favorite and in fact she used their quotes only because they both made the same point about making choices. But you see Scarborough doesn't have the intellectual integrity that he demanded last week of everyone criticizing Limbaugh.
The right wing blogosphere went after blood last week because of the fake Limbaugh quote, are progressives and liberals prepared to do the same? All it takes is for Scarborough and some of these other asshats to repeat this a few times and then it becomes conventional wisdom. We really shouldn't allow this to happen, especially when it is in direct response to Dunn calling out FoxNews for the ideologically driven faux journalism outlet that it is. We can keep on sitting on our hands and keeping our mouth clothes but if we do and we lose more good people because guys like Joe Scarborough are allowed to smear them with impunity then we deserve exactly what we get.
All I can say is go read the whole thing or just enjoy the excerpt.
Charles Krauthammer, the ultimate bleating-heart neoconservative, is all atwitter over Barack Obama's foreign trip. Where most rational observers saw a significant U.S. triumph, the beginning of our reconciliation with the rest of the world after eight years of stupid bellicosity, destructive threats and empty bluster, Krauthammer sees decline and weakness. Obama admitted past U.S. misbehavior! That is surely a sign of weakness...or maybe, perhaps, a sign of renewed strength? Or maybe, it's just being honest, a quality the Bush Administration eschewed. The Euros chose not to play on Afghanistan? Perhaps that had something to do with the Bush Administration's myopic avoidance of that theater of battle for the past seven years--the Euros, not the heartiest of allies when it comes to warmaking, were left to fend for themselves without any U.S. leadership or much U.S. support and they are aching to leave now. Over the next year, we'll see what effect a renewed US good-faith effort in Afghanistan has when it comes to stiffening the spines of our allies.
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And there was--oh. my. God.--the failed North Korean rocket launch. The Gates Defense budget is cutting anti-missile defense systems in Alaska. More Obama wimposity! Except that Gates has decided not to spend tens of billions on an anti-missile system (that doesn't work) to counter a North Korean rockets (that don't work) carrying North Korean atomic bombs (that have, so far, fizzled when tested). The real North Korean threat, created by George W. Bush's first-term ineptness, is the nuclear fuel that was produced in the past six years--fuel that the wildly impoverished North Koreans could sell to terrorists or rogue states (as they sold their nuclear plant design to the Syrians).
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The point is that Krauthammer's nonsense--the whole neoconservative project--proved an utter failure during the Bush years and now exists well outside a vast, stable, liberal-moderate consensus on foreign policy that includes most Democrats, the Bush 41 realists and the leading strategists of the U.S. military.
Quite a few people think that Mike Huckabee still has a chance at politics. They believe that although his Presidential campaign failed in the primary, that he has a message and a credibility with some areas of the country that might make him attractive in 2012 or 2016 to the Republican Party. Well after watching this back and forth with Sean Hannity I am now convinced that Huckabee will never run for office again because he is having too much fun as a hack for FoxNews.
Now it would be one thing if this was a speech that nobody knew about, but it was broadcast on ever cable station live including FoxNews. So it isn't like Mike Huckabee doesn't know the real context of the quote. But lets go to the transcript anyway.
In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad.
On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.
Ironically enough of course is that when President Obama talks about the arrogance and the dismissive and derisive attitude towards Europe in general and France in particular, he was DEFINITELY talking about the FoxNews crowd which champions such attitudes to their viewers. Now lets keep in mind that Huckabee is a bible thumping preacher. I could have sworn that in MY Bible there is a 10th Commandment prohibiting bearing false witness against your neighbor (I guess he didn't have enough time left over to study that part of the bible after he got done perverting any mention of "teh gays" in the scripture). But I digress. So does President Obama think America is just ordinary? Does he resent his country?
Why not start building high-speed rail? One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country -- I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can't we have -- (applause) -- why can't we have high-speed rail? And -- and so we're investing in that, as well.
That's taken from the question and answer part of the speech but more to the point we can go to the answer he gave to Ed Luce of the Financial Times in response to a question about whether he believe in American Exceptionalism.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. In the context of all the multilateral activity that's been going on this week -- the G20, here at NATO -- and your evident enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks, to work through multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to elaborate on it?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.
And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.
And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.
Here lies the fundamental difference between President Obama and the people who believe in him and a guy like Sean Hannity. See Hannity believes that leadership means you preach rainbows and unicorns no matter what. You never criticize or recognize shortcoming because in his world thats considered "weak". His view is the classic example of an enabler. As a parent he would be the type to never admonish his kids and who would always blame the teacher if the child failed. For Hannity's type its more important that you convince everybody that everything is great than taking the steps to make sure that things actually get to a situation where they ARE great. Thats why up until the day the White House finally had to admit that we had been in a recession since 2007 last September, Sean Hannity kept insisting that then Senator Obama was just making it all up and everything was fine. Its also why nobody should ever take anything he says seriously.
Now what it boils down to is that Mike Huckabee now is more concerned with joining in the smearing of our President than he is in presenting real honest criticism. You can bet that every misstatement of fact would come back to haunt him in any election campaign. Which is why I have no doubt that he is just banking on keeping his Tee Vee gig now. Whatever the case I have lost any respect for the man that I may have once had.
FoxNews has officially taken the lead in smearing Harold Koh. Thankfully Cenk Uygur takes them on and points out their wankery yet again. We can't allow these sorry bastards continue to shape public opinion and influence public policy.
Its time to draw a line in the sand against the smear merchants in the conservative blogosphere that end up influencing clueless Republicans in Congress. The latest case is their total fabrications against President Obama's nominee for advisor to the State Department, Harold Koh. This post on Slate outlines what is going on.
It's 11:45 a.m. on April 1, and if you run a Google News search on Harold Koh, dean of Yale Law School and President Obama's pick for legal adviser to the State Department, here's what you'll find: 13 pieces on far-right Web sites characterizing Koh as dangerous and anti-American; several Fox News stories, updated several times daily, one of which describes the anti-Koh screeds as "burning up the Internet"; and a measly twoblog posts defending Koh from these attacks. By the time you read this, I suspect that Fox News will have a scrolling red banner that reads, "Obama's Koh pick imperils us all" (and … wait for it … BINGO!), the anti-Koh pieces will number 18, and the pro-Koh blog posts will number three.
And yet by my most recent tally, every one of the anti-Koh rants dutifully repeats a canard that first appeared in a hatchet piece in the New York Post by former Bush administration speechwriter Meghan Clyne. She asserts that Koh believes "Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts." The evidence for her claim? "A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says that, in addressing the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007, Koh claimed that 'in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why Sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States.' "
Needless to say, if the future lawyer for the State Department wanted to apply Shariah law willy-nilly in American courtrooms, it would be a terrifying prospect. And so Daniel Pipes can title his post "Obama's Harold Koh, Promoter of Shari'a?" … OMG, people! Dean Koh wants to see women executed in the middle of the town square for wearing the wrong color burkha.
But, of course, Koh believes nothing of the sort. And the only real revelation here is that truth can't be measured in Google hit counts or partisan hysteria.
The New York Post today published a letter from Robin Reeves Zorthian, who actually organized the Yale Club dinner to which Stein refers. In that letter, Zorthian writes that "the account given by Steve Stein of Dean Koh's comments is totally fictitious and inaccurate" and that she, her husband, "and several fellow alumni ... are all adamant that Koh never said or suggested that sharia law could be used to govern cases in US courts." Why should we believe her and her colleagues over Stein? Well, for one thing, Koh in all his academic articles and many public statements has never said anything to suggest some dogged fealty to Shariah. But the right-wing blogs have yet to take note of Zorthian's version of events; the sharia fable is chuffing along on its own steam now; and Fox can continue to pass along Stein's account of the story in a breathless game of sky-is-falling telephone.
Chris Borgen, at Opinio Juris, has done a great job of debunking some of the worst of Clyne's distortions of Koh's legal and constitutional views, and Above the Law treats her absurd Shariah claims with all the unseriousness they warrant. The underlying legal charge from the right is that Koh is a "transnationalist" who seeks to subjugate all of America to elite international courts. We've heard these claims from conservative critics before. They amount to just this: The mere acknowledgment that a body of law exists outside the United States is tantamount to claiming that America is enslaved to that law. The recognition that international law even exists somehow transforms the U.S. Supreme Court into a sort of intermediate court of appeals that must answer to the Dreaded Court of Elitist European Preferences. Harold Koh is not a radical legal figure. He has served with distinction in both Democratic and Republican administrations (under Presidents Clinton and Reagan), and in that capacity he sued both Democratic and Republic administrations. He was confirmed unanimously 11 years ago, and yet this time around, he is a threat to American sovereignty.
If you read this post then please either blog about it on your own spot or pass the link around to the story to your family and friends. Its time to take back public discourse from the assholes who got the country in all this trouble in the first place!
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