Truth (plus lies) » barack obama

We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition

Jefff — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:43:16 +0000

We the People is a web page that the White House created to let people create petitions that get official responses when enough people sign. Unsurprisingly, the official responses are disappointing and wishy-washy, like this one about the phrase “under God”, which was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

Nevertheless, someone seems to have come up with a petition guaranteed to receive the consideration it demands:

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

Sign the petition. Via Weigel.

Jesus hates Obama. Just kidding. But no, really.

Jefff — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:33:44 +0000

Fox has refused to air a commercial for a website called Jesus Hates Obama. When you visit the site, you get this message:

Do we really believe that Jesus hates Obama? Of course not!

However, we do believe in freedom… as in the freedom to make fun of the Obama Administration with novelty t-shirts.

These guys are dipshits ;P

2012 campaign starting later than 2008

Jefff — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:24:59 +0000

It’s almost four years since Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 Presidential Election. David Weigel points out that at this point in that cycle, 14 candidates had already announced.

April 17, 2006: Mike Gravel (announcing a full-on campaign at the National Press Club)
October 30, 2006: Duncan Hunter (announcing he’d retire from Congress and run for president)
November 9, 2006: Tom Vilsack (announcing a full campaign)
November 13, 2006: Rudy Giuliani
November 15, 2006: John McCain
December 4, 2006: Sam Brownback
December 7, 2006: Bill Richardson (telling Fox News “I am running”)
December 15, 2006: Tommy Thompson
December 19, 2006: Jim Gilmore
December 26, 2006: John Edwards
January 3, 2007: Mitt Romney
January 7, 2007: Joe Biden (announcing his intention to create a committee, on Meet the Press)
January 11, 2007: Chris Dodd (announcing a full-on run on Don Imus’s show), Ron Paul

So far, not a single candidate has announced for 2012. What does it mean? My guess is that the candidates of 2008 were more eager to fight for an open office. By that thinking, a better comparison would be 2004. Let’s check on those dates:

May 31, 2002: Howard Dean
December 1, 2002: John Kerry
January 2, 2003: John Edwards
January 4, 2003: Richard Gephardt
January 5: Al Sharpton

Hmmmm… well, it’s not 14. But it’s still half of the eventual field of ten. And of course, it’s all the major players, including Howard Dean a full two-and-a-half years before the election. And when you count only the Democrats for 2008, you get 6, so there’s not much difference. That pretty much blows my hypothesis out of the water.

Naturally, I’d like my backup explanation to be that the Republicans are all just scared of Obama — and Fox talking points notwithstanding, I do think Obama is seen to be a stronger opponent than Bush. Still, I don’t think that’s the reason. Certainly, there are 2012 candidates out there who have already made up their minds, and I can’t see why the potential difficulty of the race would make them wait.

Perhaps there’s a very important uncertainty that they want settled before they commit? This couldn’t really be about Palin, could it?

Hugo Chavez rejects Obama’s ambassador, would prefer someone famous

Jefff — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:35:04 +0000

Hugo Chavez has rejected President Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to Venezuela. The nominee, Larry Palmer, has criticized Chavez’s government. But maybe that’s not the problem! Maybe Chavez is just looking for someone a little more Hollywood.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Venezuela’s president said he had come up with a solution. “I hope they name Oliver Stone. I’ll suggest a candidate … Sean Penn or [linguist and philosopher Noam] Chomsky. We have a lot of friends there. Bill Clinton.”

Socialism v. Liberalism v. Jonah Goldberg

Jefff — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:23:46 +0000

In what may be the quintessential Jonah Goldberg moment, here he is bemoaning liberals for purveying the stigma around the term “socialism” instead of just using it to describe a set of policies similar to what a lot of mainstream European politicians support. All while talking about a book about Obama and socialism by his NRO colleague called Radical-in-Chief. The comments from his readers further belie his point.

David Weigel’s six amazing ideas

Jefff — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:50:24 +0000

In light of a dumb Washington Post article about how Barack Obama can be a great, productive post-partisan president by not seeking re-election, David Weigel graces us with six other outside-the-box, counterintuitive column ideas. Read the whole article for descriptions.

How Obama Can Win by Leaving the Democratic Party

How Obama Can—and Must—Give the Presidency to Nancy Pelosi

Obama Must Cancel the KSM Trial and Kill Him With His Bare Hands

Obama Must Relocate the White House to the Heartland

Obama Can Win in 2012 if He Changes His Last Name to Dunham

Why Obama Needs a New First Lady

Obama wanted to rape America (?)

Jefff — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:57:19 +0000

The ever-reliable World Net Daily goes the extra mile to give us this greatest ever expression of Right-Wing paranoia:

Like the sorority girl who fell asleep drunk, awakening to an opportunistic frat boy peeling her clothes off, Americans let their guard down in a big way. Fortunately, the fear roused us from that torpor and insensibility, and we were able to fend him off before the deed was done. But we have a responsibility now to determine that he doesn’t have the opportunity to harm anyone else.

Americans cannot forget that they mobilized in order to avert a communist coup and must continue to remind the GOP leadership and newly elected lawmakers of that fact. That’s what the midterm election was about.

Obama was peeling our clothes off. THAT’S WHAT THIS ELECTION WAS ABOUT.

Via Wonkette.

The undignified Obama-Emanuel hug is just the tip of the weakness iceberg

Jefff — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:46:12 +0000

Larry Kudlow of Big Government is disappointed that President Obama hugged the out-going Rahm Emanuel.

Remember, this is on global television. And it has to do with the very top of the United States government. Our friends and enemies were all watching.

…

Why not just a dignified, stand-up, serious handshake? That’s what Reagan would have done.

…

Perhaps I’m overreacting to this.

Jesus, yes. Perhaps.

Via The Slatest.

We are all Kenyan anti-colonialists now

Jefff — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:25:06 +0000

Pure gold from Newt Gingrich:

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

He’s referring to this masterpiece of refusing to use Occam’s Razor by Dinesh D’Souza, which pivots on D’Souza’s bewilderment with Obama’s behavior to make the case that he’s just fulfilling the dreams of his long-dead, absentee father.

In fact, what really seems to be the case (to those of us not afflicted with being Newt Gingrich) is that D’Souza — as a principled conservative — held some seriously insane ideas about Obama, and when the President failed to behave according to caricature, D’Souza had to search for an even nuttier explanation.

Cordoba’s logo has the peace sign in it…. for what it’s worth

Jefff — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:07:08 +0000

The designer who made the Cordoba Initiative’s logo by arranging western peace signs in a Muslim-ish flower pattern sighs over the insignificance of his design in the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. For him, the Initiative’s embrace of this western symbol is evidence of their good intentions.

Oh but this is the culture war, and nothing is uncontroversial in the culture war. Back when the Peace symbol was becoming ubiquitous, conservative and Christian groups warned about the nefarious meanings encoded in it. From Time Magazine, 1970:

American Opinion magazine, published by John Birch Society Founder Robert Welch, compared the familiar peace symbol to an anti-Christian “broken cross” carried by the Moors when they invaded Spain in the 8th century. A recent national Republican newsletter noted an ominous similarity to a symbol used by the Nazis in World War II; some experts say it was a letter in an ancient Nordic alphabet. Any resemblance, however, is probably coincidental. The peace design was devised in Britain for the first Ban-the-Bomb Aldermaston march in 1958. The lines inside the circle stand for “nuclear disarmament.” They are a stylized combination of the semaphore signal for N (flags in an upsidedown V) and D (flags held vertically, one above the signaler’s head and the other at his feet).

Which sounds an awful like the present-day right wing’s conspiracy theories about Obama’s nuclear summit logo and this missile defense logo:

Says Big Government’s Frank Gaffney:

Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.

What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo (above). As Logan helpfully shows, the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.

The evidence is conclusive.

PS I think the lesson for designers in this is that people will receive the message they’re looking for in your design long before they receive the message you actually put there.
Via The Morning News, Wikipedia.