The more things change, the more they stay the same:
Mayor Vaughn: [to reporter] I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you see, it’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means “friendship”. – From the movie “Jaws“.
and…
But we haven’t had, really, any impact. I mean, we haven’t had enough oil hit Mississippi’s beaches to fill up a milk jug. Now, we’re prepared and we’re prepared for the worst. But thus far, we haven’t had any kind of incursion, except the news coverage is killing our tourist business. – Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
More on Barbour’s links to big oil over at Think Progress.
The mother of a Kentucky high school football player is furious over the Christian baptism of her son during what he said was supposed to be a school outing to eat a steak dinner and see a “motivational speaker.”
Instead, Breckinridge County High School football coach Scott Mooney took 20 of his players on a trip to a Baptist revival, where eight or nine of the students underwent the Christian ritual of baptism, according to published reports.
Michelle Ammons, mother of 16-year-old Robert Coffee, said she’s upset that nobody ever asked her consent to take her son to the August 26 religious ceremony. She added that she’s even more upset with the school district superintendent Janet Meeks, who was at the revival and did not object to the coach including his students.
“Nobody should push their faith on anybody else,” Ammons told the Louisville Courier-Journal.
It was a rare breach of the protocol that governs ritualistic events in the Capitol.
In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”
His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.
Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.
Now, it’s a real shame this has to even be clarified: there’s a huge difference between booing or yelling “No! No!” during a speech and shouting “You lie!”
Yelling “No! No!” or booing during a speech is merely an expression of disagreementwith the speech itself. It’s a time honored form of disagreement in such circumstance, even within the walls of the capitol. It may be a breech of protocol, but one that is practiced nonetheless, from time to time.
But, shouting “You lie!” is more than an expression of disagreement with the speech by the president.
Shouting “You lie!” is an accusation. And, it was directed squarely at the president.
It’s a historically important moment that would have provoked riotous wailing from conservatives if done by a Democrat to a Republican president. Since when are accusations of lying okay?
The fact that conservatives simply do not get that is yet one more example of how deep down the rabbit hole they have crawled.
Rep. Wilson was right to apologize, even if he did so and then tried to immediately back pedal.
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly really sums this one up nicely:
There are a few important angles to this. The first is substantive. When Wilson accused the president of lying, Wilson was, in fact, lying. Even in Congress, facts should matter, and the right-wing Republican wasn’t just obnoxious with his idiotic interruption, he was also wrong.
The second is personal. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress, said, “Whoever shouted out that the president was lying is a dumbass.” John McCain denounced Wilson’s outburst as “totally disrespectful.” While right-wing blogs were thrilled, Republican lawmakers have been entirely unwilling to defend Wilson’s behavior.
The third is contextual. President Obama couldn’t have been more magnanimous last night, highlighting a plan that “incorporates ideas from many people in this room tonight, Democrats and Republicans.” He made frequent references to Republican lawmakers and even George W. Bush. Obama even talked up medical malpractice reform. It was in this context that Wilson decided to lash out? As Gail Collins noted this morning, “Let me go out on a limb and say that it is not a good plan to heckle the president of the United States when he’s making a speech about replacing acrimony with civility.”
The fourth is practical. While Dems have been divided of late on policy specifics, they were unified last night — they loved Obama and they hated Joe Wilson. Indeed, I’ve seen reports that Wilson’s Democratic opponent next year, Rob Miller, suddenly saw a wave of new campaign contributions in the wake of Wilson’s conduct.
It’s striking that Wilson, unable to find any support from his allies, quickly apologized. He said his emotions got the best of him, and issued a statement that said, “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.” He spoke directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel last night to express his regret.
But the damage has been done. Indeed, Wilson’s outburst is an almost perfect summation of 2009 — President Obama appears big, Republicans appear small. Democrat show class, Republicans act like children. One side is serious, one side is shrill. The White House says something true, Republicans lash out with falsehoods.
To be sure, Wilson is a buffoon, from whom very little is expected. He’s hosting Glenn Beck minions at his office this weekend, and is a reflexive, right-wing clown masquerading as a congressman. He embarrassed himself, his party, and his institution last night, but it’s unlikely Wilson actually cares whether he’s a disgrace or not. Bruce Bartlett noted this morning, “He’s become the new Sarah Palin of the Republican Party, where one’s popularity is in inverse proportion to one’s stupidity — the stupider a Republican is these days the more popular he or she becomes.”
What will be interesting to see if there are any real consequences. There’s been some talk of censure, or demanding that Wilson deliver a formal apology to the House itself.
Any return to civility is a good start. Whether we can carry such civility farther and get health care reform on track again, remains to be seen.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air thinks he’s being clever by putting Obama’s just released speech on education through a word frequency generator and then citing frequency of words as a window into the deeper meaning of the speech. It’s a silly and misleading exercise, since it strips all meaning out of the speech. It is words put into sentences and how sentences relate to each other that gives a speech meaning, not only the words. And, certainly not the frequency of the words removed from their overall context, as I’ll point out.
Of course, it’s a disinformation exercise meant to push Ed’s own conservative agenda in regard to the speech – “it’s all about Obama (and that means Obama is not to be trusted)” - as revealed by his choice of words to zoom in on and his “supporting” statements. It is also worth noting that Ed offers nary a comment on the actual theme, subject or text of the speech beyond trying to ignite some type of fight between Obama and Atheists.
The tally of important words in Obama’s speech according to Ed: (Emphasis added)
56 iterations of “I”
19 iterations of “school”
10 iterations of “education”
8 iterations of “responsibility”
7 iterations of “country”
5 iterations each of “parents”, “teachers”
3 iterations of “nation”
In other words, Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined. And to think that people accused Obama of self-promotion!
So, what happens if you put George H.W. Bush’s speech to the faculty and students at Alice Deal Junior High School on October 1, 1991 into the word frequency generator? The tally for the exact same words chosen by Ed:
32 iterations of “I”
24 iterations of “school”
8 iterations of “education”
0 iterations of “responsibility”
5 iterations of “country”
6 iterations of “parents”
7 iterations of “teachers”
1 iteration of “nation”
Bush also used “I” more than any of the other words chosen by Ed, just like Obama did. And, what can we infer about Bush’s complete lack of using “responsibility”? It’s silly.
It’s not about the word count frequency, it’s about what the words say as sentences and as a whole speech. And, if you read both speeches, neither is self promoting beyond making it clear “this is what I went through” or “I did this” etc. Here’s a pertinent example from Obama’s speech. It’s immediately clear why conservatives such as Ed don’t want to talk about the content, but only about totally mindless diversions such as “word frequency”. This is powerful, personal and important stuff for kids to hear:
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school.
That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
The use of first person is meant to be inspiring! That’s the importance of a president using first person in a speech such as this. “I” is an important literary device. And, juxtaposed with “you”, it has import, especially with children. And, there’s the rub:
What was the most used word in Obama’s speech? “You”.
Way out in the lead at 145 times. (Bush used it 85 times, second behind “the”.) Ed didn’t write about that did he? Just what can we infer about Bush using “the” more than any other word? It’s ridiculous. But, that’s Ed’s “logic”.
What Ed is avoiding is that presidential speeches to children are traditionally of the “Hi, I’m president and you can be too some day if you stay in school” variety. Thus, “I” is used. And, as a writer, if you are being personal, you have to use “I”. It doesn’t necessarily mean the speech is “all about Obama” as Ed is stating. Such speeches are often about the president and the presidency, and Obama is president. Ed takes the context completely out of the speech by breaking it down to frequency of each word and it only serves to alter the real meaning of the speech, obscuring Obama’s message thereby obstructing any forward movement.
We are going to be hearing a lot of the word “obstructionist” in the days and years ahead.
People bound by fear will stand frozen on the tracks as the train rushes upon them.
YouTube vid of Bob Dylan’s banned satirical song about paranoid right wing racists written in 1963 as a response to the popularity of the John Birch Society. It was dropped from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan due to political concerns and remained unreleased until the Bootleg disc in the mid 90′s.
Could have been written today. Scary.
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
Well, I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue,
I didn’t know what in the world I was gonna do,
Them Communists they wus comin’ around,
They wus in the air,
They wus on the ground.
They wouldn’t gimme no peace. . .
So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society,
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin’ down the road.
Yee-hoo, I’m a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!
Now we all agree with Hitlers’ views,
Although he killed six million Jews.
It don’t matter too much that he was a Fascist,
At least you can’t say he was a Communist!
That’s to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria.
Well, I wus lookin’ everywhere for them gol-darned Reds.
I got up in the mornin’ ‘n’ looked under my bed,
Looked in the sink, behind the door,
Looked in the glove compartment of my car.
Couldn’t find ‘em . . .
I wus lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere,
I wus lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair.
I looked way up my chimney hole,
I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl.
They got away . . .
Well, I wus sittin’ home alone an’ started to sweat,
Figured they wus in my T.V. set.
Peeked behind the picture frame,
Got a shock from my feet, hittin’ right up in the brain.
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones.
Well, I quit my job so I could work alone,
Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes.
Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered they wus red stripes on the American flag!
That ol’ Betty Ross . . .
Well, I investigated all the books in the library,
Ninety percent of ‘em gotta be burned away.
I investigated all the people that I knowed,
Ninety-eight percent of them gotta go.
The other two percent are fellow Birchers . . . just like me.
Now Eisenhower, he’s a Russian spy,
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy.
To my knowledge there’s just one man
That’s really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell.
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus.
Well, I fin’ly started thinkin’ straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn’t imagine doin’ anything else,
So now I’m sittin’ home investigatin’ myself!
Hope I don’t find out anything . . . hmm, great God!
Revealing Hate: Inside White Supremacist World – Much of the current political atmosphere in the USA can be traced to the increase in hate based thought…. It’s more common than you think….
…all of the above-listed people are examples of America’s Great Meritocracy, having achieved what they have solely on the basis of their talent, skill and hard work — The American Way. By contrast, Sonia Sotomayor — who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in Bronx housing projects; whose father had a third-grade education, did not speak English and died when she was 9; whose mother worked as a telephone operator and a nurse; and who then became valedictorian of her high school, summa cum laude at Princeton, a graduate of Yale Law School, and ultimately a Supreme Court Justice — is someone who had a whole litany of unfair advantages handed to her and is the poster child for un-American, merit-less advancement.
There are a large number of US citizens, traditionally referred to as “Middle Americans,” who are engaged in small, private industry-jobs that have an uncertain future and that live and die on the prospects of a marketplace that is unhindered by taxes and government regulation. Even if they live in a rental unit, they live in communities dominated by the concerns of low-income home owners-people who do not know how to get along with more than $500 a month spent on housing costs-to whom the yearly property tax bill is a very big deal. They can’t spend too much breath decrying the expense of the local school system, or the roads, or the courts and emergency services-each of which provides them an obvious benefit. So what do they get mad at?? “Government.” Whatever that means.
A pattern emerges. We worship an ideal which most of us will never attain and deny what we truly are in order to insure at least the fantasy that we are part of the aristocracy. An aristocracy that devours us as we cheer it on in the hope that they will let us in the door.
It’s a perspective that is enforced and propagated by advertising and marketing as well.
Something better lay ahead to be sure… Break free.
The “birther” movement is an extreme right wing disinformation campaign that proffers the idea that President Obama is not a US citizen, and was born abroad in Kenya. Here’s the rub: there are no actual facts to support this claim, rather the disinfo subsists on a form of cognitive dissonance – denial – and is propped up by a series of logical fallacies, from burden of proof to sweeping generalizations to just plain old bullshit.
It’s eliminationism in its purest form: marginalize your opponent to the point that they are a non-citizen, illegitimate, then cut off the discussion by dismissing any introduced facts as untrue. (Or made up, imagined, crazy, over sensitive, etc.)
For example, when the State of Hawaii confirmed that Obana’s birth certificate was indeed real and official, the birther movement simply denied it to be true and then went one better and denied that the birth certificate has yet to be provided as proof! Brilliant in a way. But, also, the very definition of a lie. Here’s the simple true logic: denying a fact (or its existence) does not create a new fact. (IE: Denying Obama’s birth papers are real does not mean he is not a real citizen.) That’s just crazy.
As an emerging issue it’s a double edge sword and difficult to discuss since it’s clearly a disinformation campaign with one aim: to stoke the racial hatred and undermine Obama’s legitimacy as President. And, its proponents love nothing more than to keep the hate fires burning.
Yet, in reality, Obama’s citizenship is a non-issue, it’s been proven beyond a doubt according to standards that have been suitable for every US President who has been elected prior. (But of course, to the racist, those standards are not good enough for a black person, let alone a black person named Barack Hussein Obama.)
FactCheck does a superb analysis of the “scandal” and analysis of the original certificate. The allegations are so completely incorrect and fabricated that it deserves nothing more than ridicule. The problem is that it’s wrapped in hate and irrationality, thus, there’s simply no middle ground from which to establish a coherent debate. Any introduction of fact is dismissed outright. That’s why hate based tactics are so difficult to fight against. Those who wage this type of tactic, (and those who believe it) simply deny the facts, deny the existence of the hate and the racism. It’s a figment of the imagination. Those looney Liberals!
There will always be those who want to believe what they believe, damn the facts. And, that is how “conspiracies” live and breath. That is how hatred and racism gain a foothold. If they don’t really exist, then why are they a problem? Neat, right?
In the past few days the birther movement has slithered into new territory. It is now being disseminated by traditional outlets on TV and radio – Lou Dobbs of CNN and Rush Limbaugh have both lent their “support” – and that means it should be dealt with properly. No longer simply a fringe issue spun in dark dank dive bars, afluent suburb BBQ’s and hidden corners of the internet by nut job conspiracy theorists, it’s now being lent “credibility”. While it’s true that neither Dobbs nor Limbuagh are known for their objectivity or adherence to the facts, and they both clearly suffer from a deeply rooted hate based approach in their worldview and broadcasts, the fact remains that their broadcasts are swallowed whole as the gospel truth by millions. Sad, but true.
Interestingly, the birther movement can be traced back to the Obama campaign itself during the 2008 election. It’s a public relations effort gone bad. Apparently, a decision was made, in the spirit of transparency to release Obama’s birth certificate. Historically, presidential candidates have not released such information. Rather, it was presented during qualification of the candidate, but not made public. So, by releasing the birth certificate the Obama campaign opened a Pandora’s Box. Once it was made public, it meant it was open to intense scrutiny – most of it incorrect – that would be passed around the internet as fact and eventually make it’s way to less discerning minds, like Dobbs and Limbuagh, and those who listen to them.
At it’s root the birther movement is racism. It’s meant to create the impression that Obama is illegitimate, lower than a US citizen, not one of us. It’s meant to stoke the fires of suspicion and hatred towards immigrants and people of color. It’s not unlike the “Obama is a Muslim” meme. Same thing.
So, next time someone says to you that Obama’s opponents are not racist, cite the birther movement. Cite the Obama is a Muslim meme. And, if that doesn’t get their attention, show them this picture. (scroll down)
If they still don’t get it, call it as you see it.
The only way we will defeat racism is to make it unacceptable. And, those who make excuses for it are just as unacceptable as those who are openly racist.
A lot of extreme right wing blogs are at Red Alert in reaction to the health care debate. Fear is the only challenge they can offer to pretty much every issue on the boards. It’s a psyche loop they can’t remove themselves from… and it’s sad to watch. Just click on some of the reaction links at Memeorandum. Fear fear fear. Disinformation. Pathetic. The party of “No” is morphing into the party of “Oh no!!!!!!”
What is it about evil people not having an orginal creative bone in their bodies? And, couldn’t they have ripped off a better song?
Via the good folks at Sadly, No! comes this oily gem from the racist homophobic evil trolls at Fred Phelps church. Please note the Richard Ramirez effect around the eyes, the deep black circles and blood red soaked look that people who live and breath hate get, as we see in this picture. Roll the video:
