birther queen no more

msnbc — orange county dentist and lawyer orly taitz, better known as the "queen bee" of the birther movement, which challenges whether barack obama is a natural-born citizen eligible to serve as president, appeared on "countdown with keith olbermann" last night to announce the end of her more than yearlong pursuit of obama's ouster. msnbc host olbermann, among many in the press, had been relentlessly critical of taitz' unsuccessful crusade against the president, which has thus far resulted in $20,000 of legal fines against taitz. taitz gave a soft-spoken, knowledgeable, well-reasoned and even literate mea culpa for her "quixotic pursuit" of the president and her "unjustified harassment" of everyone whom she thought was in her way or merely contradicted her. she then bluntly denounced as "bottom-feeders" all those she had been consorting with since she began her crusade in november 2008. lastly she announced that she would be turning her "defend our freedoms foundation" into a mental health clinic for right-wing extremists. at the end of the segment, olbermann produced a giant prop check for $20,072, the sum of her legal fines and the interest accrued on them, and introduced retired major general jerry white, the president of the national infantry foundation, and judge clay d. land of georgia. taitz beamed as she offered the check to white, whose foundation was named as the intended recipient of the funds by judge land, who levied the fine against taitz for misconduct in october 2009.

good answer

joe scarborough and friends do their vapid best to get tom hanks, "the nicest guy in hollywood", to pile on obama:

joe:	... and [james carville] said: "what the obama people don't understand is washington always wins."
mika:	[nodding in agreement.]
joe:	is this one more depressing example — for you 1 — of how, with the obama administration, washington always wins?
tom:	we, ah, we're in the first year of what is going to be — what is going to be one the most difficult administrations in our history. we're at a place where world history is traveling around us. we're going to be fine and i think we've elected a wise, calm man who wants to get things done. common sense will out.
mika:	i don't disagree with that. i do think there may be people out there who would say, "well it's easy for you to say, easy for us to say", but there are a lot of people out there with no job and they have been looking for months and months and months and they may feel like this president is not completely connected with their plight.
tom:	well, maybe they, maybe they can elect [invent?] a time machine and they can go back and vote for john mccain, in which case i'm sure everything would just be hunky-dory right now.
mika:	ahh ... good answer! okay ...

---

1. ... because grown-up talk like that would naturally depress someone like you, tom, a naive liberal hollywood fantasist, and not someone like me, joe scarborough, a smug and savvy washington insider who, like a real democrat like my buddy carville, knows who's really running things ...

who, us?

faux fox news' bill o'reilly and bernie goldberg seem to be having a hard time understanding all the fingers pointing at their network:

o'reilly:

[time magazine's joe] klein writes, quote: "fox news peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. some of it borders on sedition. much of it is flat out untrue." unquote. but even though he has plenty of space, klein fails to illustrate his point, providing no examples of what he says is untrue ...

goldberg:

who exactly at fox news is inciting a rebellion against the government?

sigh.

this is just too easy.

keith? you wanna do the honors?

when another of the hannity faithful noted that armed insurrection and coups would be treason, someone else posted at hannity.com, quote: "only if the insurrection or coup fails." sean "you might want to check if this constitutes incitement to treason" hannity: today's "worst person in the world"!

bad americans

former leading member of the christian evangelical movement frank schaeffer says enough is enough! and he's pointing fingers and naming names.

maddow: do you think that calling the president a "nazi" ... calling the president "hitler" ... is an implicit call for politically motivated violence?

schaeffer: yes i do. in fact this rings a big bell with me because my dad who is a right wing evangelical leader wrote a book called a christian manifesto ... and in that book he compared anybody who was pro-abortion to the nazi germans; and he said that using violence or force to overthrow nazi germany would have been appropriate for christians including the assassination of hitler. he compared the supreme court's actions on abortion to that. and that has been a note that has been following the right wing movement that my father and i helped start ... so what's being said here is really two messages: there's the message to the predominatly white, middle-aged crowds of people screaming at these meetings trying to shut them down; but there's also a coded message to what i would call the "looney tunes" — the fruit loops on the side — that's really like playing russian roulette. you put a cartridge in the chamber and you spin and once in a while it goes off, and we saw that with dr. tiller, we've seen it happen numerous times in this country with the violence against political leaders whether it's martin luther king or whoever it might be. we have a history of being a well-armed violent country. and so, really, i think that these calls are incredibly irresponsible. but the good news is is that it shows a desperation. the far right knows they've lost. they've lost the hearts and minds of most american people ... but they also know that they have a large group of people who are not well-informed, who listen to their own sources, who buy the lies ... and these people can be energized to go out and do really dreadful things and we've seen it in front of abortion clinics — i'm afraid we're going to see it with some of our political leaders. and the glenn becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing what i regard as an anti-democratic, anti-american movement in this country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and replace it with straight out intimidation. ... these are very bad signs and i'm not at all optimistic about how this is all going to end in terms of violence although i do think that obama is going to win the day in terms of most americans. the problem is we're not talking about most americans. we're talking about a small angry group of white people who — to, y'know, paraphrase bart simpson, "the election broke their brains." they're angry and they're ready to do just about anything to stop the process at this point because they'd rather see us all lose than admit defeat. that's where they're at. ... you have a group of people who, like rush limbaugh, would rather see the president and the country fail, and their coded message to their own lunatic fringe is very sinful, and that is "go for broke". when you start comparing a democratically elected president who is not only our first black president but a moderate progressive to adolf hitler, you have arrived at a point where you are literally leaving a loaded gun on the table, saying "first person who wants to use this, go ahead, be our guest." now, all these people, when something bad happens, will raise their holy hands in horror and say "of course, we didn't mean that, we were just talking about being americans. it's american to protest ..." B.S.! they know exactly what's out there. there is a whole public there who went out and stocked up on ammunition and guns thinking obama would take away their weapons. one such person shot down three policemen in pittsburgh. i'd like to know exactly what glenn beck and fox news will say the morning after someone takes a shot at our president or kills a senator or congressman ... and if it's one of the people who we find a little note in their car or their literature or their television watching habits who's tied to these people who are stirring the pot, or tied to these foundations that people like dick armey are running, trying to use insurance company money to make look these fake grass roots movement, then we'll see what happens. but at that point we'll be in a new zone, and it'll be too late. so my warning to my old friends on the right ... without the work of my father, c. everett koop and myself, there'd be no pro-life movement, no religious right to be fomenting these things from, it's this same cast of characters. i came to a place in my life when i realized that i'd made a big mistake. now we've crossed a line into which hate and vitriol have gone to a point where it is anti-democratic and anti-american. these people do not want america to succeed. they'd rather see our system go down than have a black president, someone with different political views, someone appointing people like sotomayor, hispanic people, women and others, and we've arrived at a point where enough is enough! so these people are hate-mongers ... spreading this rhetoric, spreading these lies ... these are bad americans and they're putting us all at risk.

tweety comes on strong

with msnbc hardball host chris matthews, it's sometimes a crap shoot trying to figure out where he'll land on an issue.

this time he landed — with both feet — on a couple of necks: some poor insurance industry shill and 50+ years of republican inaction:

birther blitz

if any publicity is good publicity, then this week was an unabashed (though admittedly unrequited) love fest for our attention-starved birther buddies:

obama press secretary robert gibbs, press briefing, c-span (7/13):

keith olbermann, countdown, msnbc (7/14):

keith olbermann, countdown, msnbc (7/15):

brett baier, political grapevine, fox (7/17)

kitty pilgrim, lou dobbs tonight, cnn (7/17):

quote of the day

msnbc news anchor david shuster, on last night's countdown, delivers a nuclear wedgie to tomorrow's fox news cross-country "tea party" tax protests — can you count the puns? answers below (no peeking!)

if you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you’re gonna need a dick armey.

1) mouthpieces 2) going nuts 3) whipped out 4) toothless 5) full-throated 6) tongue-lashing 7) lick government spending 8) in a nutshell 9) firm support 10) tight-lipped 11) up-close and personal taste 12) dick armey

mcjindal

the reviews are in — but haven't we seen this movie before?

keith olbermann, rachel maddow and chris matthews on msnbc:

josh marshall @ talkingpointsmemo:

jindal's comments and presentation was just weird and cringy and awful.

david brooks on pbs news hour:

... uh, not so well. you know, i think bobby jindal is a very promising politician, and i oppose the stimulus because i thought it was poorly drafted, but to come up at this moment in history with a stale "government is the problem," "we can't trust the federal government" — it's just a disaster for the republican party. the country is in a panic right now. they may not like the way the democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we're just gonna — that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that — in a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say "government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending," it's just a form of nihilism. it's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is. there's an intra-republican debate. some people say the republican party lost its way because they got too moderate. some people say they got too weird or too conservative. he thinks they got too moderate, and so he's making that case. i think it's insane, and i just think it's a disaster for the party. i just think it's unfortunate right now.

andrew sullivan @ the atlantic:

close your eyes and think of kenneth from 30 rock. i can barely count the number of emails making that observation. i'm told olbermann's open mic got it right: jindal's entrance reminded one of mr. burns gamboling toward a table of ointments. ... there was, alas, a slightly high-school debate team feel to the beginning. and there was a patronizing feel to it as well — as if he were talking to kindergartners — that made obama's adult approach so much more striking. and i'm not sure that the best example for private enterprise is responding to a natural calamity that even ron paul believes is a responsibility for the federal government. and really: does a republican seriously want to bring up katrina? as for the biography, it felt like obama-lite. with far less political skill. ... but give him his due: he did in the end concede that the gop currently has a credibility problem on the fiscal issues they are now defining themselves with.... the rest was boilerplate. and tired, exhausted, boilerplate. if the gop believes tax cuts — more tax cuts — are the answer to every problem right now, they are officially out of steam and out of ideas. and remember: this guy is supposed to be the smart one.

kathryn jean lopez @ the national review:

e-mails i’m getting are from disappointed conservatives. they wanted a full-throated response to obama and expected and/or wanted more.

not even fox news is interested in rescuing poor bobby:

brit hume:	the speech read a lot better than it sounded. this was not bobby jindal's greatest oratorical moment.
nina easton:	the delivery was not exactly terrific.
charles krauthammer:	jindal didn't have a chance. he follows obama, who in making speeches, is in a league of his own. he's in a reagan-esque league. ... [jindal] tried the best he could.
juan williams:	it came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy. he was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish.

okay, enough with the paid opinions — what are real patriotic god-fearing usurper-hating americans saying?:

back to the drawing board, GOP!!!!

someone needs to teach the GOP about youtube and other networking sites. from what i can tell, there's still no "official" GOP rebuttal video posted.

the first 10 minutes was a disaster. oh wait, the speech was only 10 mins long? well, i was hoping he would do well but did not impress. we need four things four years from now. personality, can give a speech, conservative, and can raise $500 million. i think the only person who can do all four is palin. i did not connect with jindal at all tonight and i don’t know if anyone else can raise %500 million.

jindal’s speech was a stinker. to begin with, i’m sick of hearing republicans going on and on about how the election of 0bama was so so historic. jindal’s delivery was poor, and his attempts at personalizing stories kind of fell flat. i’ve heard him speak before, he’s a smart guy, but he’s very dull. if he were to get the nomination in 2012 he’d draw mccain size crowds, maybe a bit bigger. bored, unenthusiastic crowds don’t volunteer, don’t donate, and sometimes don’t even vote. last i heard he’s only rejected $98 million of the stimulus for louisiana, which is just over ten percent. palin has rejected about 50 percent of the $1 billion offered her state. all she’s taking are for construction projects.

we have GREAT candidates but they keep being shown in an awful light. that’s the problem.

i've read about jindal for months now, but this is the first speech i've seen him make. an unmitigated disaster. ... jindal is off my list for potential 2012 nominee. which leaves...no one.

i heard jindal on the radio earlier today. sounded squishy. a republican should have gone on tonight and said: why have you spent over a million dollars keeping your birth certificate locked up? are you a natural-born citizen? are you even a citizen? since your grandfather, father, mother, and mentor, and all your associates since childhood have been communists—why aren’t you a communist? or are you? why have you seized control of the census? why have you given acorn $4 billion? isn’t there enough thuggery and vote fraud to satisfy you? of course the “stimulus bill” had no earmarks—it was 100% pork from beginning to end. earmarks are pork! if a bill is 100& pork, there’s no need for earmarks. why is the money supply shooting up like a moon rocket? and why have you spent over a million dollars keeping your birth certificate locked up? (i know—i want to see this question repeated.)

mccain's weekend

msnbc's domenico montanaro sums it up fairly accurately: (links mine)

mccain's rough weekend: you know you had a problematic weekend when: one of your top economic advisers/surrogates finally steps down from the campaign after his “nation of whiners” remark; you get panned for breaking codel [congressional delegation] protocol/etiquette by announcing (incorrectly) at a fundraiser that your opponent is headed to iraq on friday or saturday; the prime minister of iraq tells a german magazine that he backs your opponent's plan for withdrawing troops from that country; and when the iraqi government tries to walk back that support, it does so unconvincingly.

meanwhile the gods of cable snafus swooped in for the cruel kill:

alex witt: ok, peter, i want you to take a listen to what john mccain said this weekend in his radio address, get you to react. peter, listen up ... [cut to video of the joker from "the dark knight"] ... uhh well, actually that was, uhh ... the joker. so we’re not gonna go there. there’s no parallel there that we want to, uh, make any sort of, uhh ... you know where i’m going with that. that was bad.

the mchoneymoon is over

the reviews are in and even fox news couldn't spin this one ...

"john mccain had better start working on his speech-making and learn how to use a teleprompter." "john mccain sounded old." — mort kondrake, roll call (fox news) "... last i checked this was not a speech-making contest. thank god!" — alex costellanos, republican strategist (cnn) "what about that mccain speech? that was awful ... that was pathetic! he looked awful. he looked catatonic. i mean that audience, that handful of people. you've got 20,000 people in minnesota [listening to obama] and, like, a couple hundred in louisiana ... where [mccain's] struggling with the teleprompter. i mean, i thought that was one of the worst speeches that i've ever seen him give." — jeffrey toobin, legal analyst (cnn) "i thought the green backdrop was pretty awful." — david gergen, analyst (cnn) "does he need help in presenting a case for himself?" — anderson cooper (cnn) "we're just trying to lower expectations now." — alex costellanos, republican strategist (cnn) "i gotta give 'em credit, the mccain people: they put a room together where john mccain's the youngest person in the room!" — james carville, clinton strategist (cnn) "it's kinda painful, at least tonight, listening to john mccain." — mort kondrake, roll call (fox news) "this was really a hopeless night for mccain to really match up with obama. he shouldn't have tried in the first place." — bill kristol, weekly standard (fox news)

... nope, no gold spun out of that one — but not for the lack of trying:

"i think we would agree that this was a speech that was better on the printed page than it was coming from john mccain's mouth." — chris wallace (fox news) "let's not be mistaken — this speech tonight by john mccain may be the best he's given on the campaign trail." — harold ford, chairman, democratic leadership council (fox news)

let campaign '08 begin!

still waiting

david shuster, having caught his breath after his last big report on karl rove's pending indictment, decides to play it safe on tonight's msnbc hardball with chris matthews:

shuster: it's now been 26 days since rove testified to the grand jury for the fifth time. defense lawyers say prosecutors remain focused on rove's claim of a bad memory, regarding a conversation with time magazine reporter matt cooper. rove's legal team and former prosecutors tracking the investigation expect special patrick fitzgerald to announce a decision at any time.

yes, i expect he will, at that.

the waiting game

things seem to be getting out of hand.

still no rove indictment. one journalist's already checkered career may be irreparably damaged. his sponsor's reputation sways in the wind. prosecutor fitzgerald remains silent. has something gone horribly wrong in the plame investigation?

one would certainly thinks so from the ballooning body of speculation overtaking the blogosphere. could all this be msnbc reporter david shuster's fault?

the ball got rolling with shuster's breathless but compelling argument made on msnbc countdown with keith olbermann on may 8:

olbermann: what are you gathering on these two main points? is the decision by mr. fitzgerald coming soon? would it be an indictment? shuster: well, karl rove's legal team has told me that they expect that a decision will come sometime in the next two weeks. and i am convinced that karl rove will, in fact, be indicted. and there are a couple of reasons why. first of all, you don't put somebody in front of a grand jury at the end of an investigation, or for the fifth time, as karl rove testified a couple — a week and a half ago, unless you feel that's your only chance of avoiding indictment. so, in other words, the burden starts with karl rove to stop the charges. secondly, it's now been 13 days since rove testified. after testifying for three and a half hours, prosecutors refused to give him any indication that he was clear. he has not gotten any indication since then, and the lawyers that i've spoken with outside of this case say that if rove had gotten himself out of the jam, he would have heard something by now. and then the third issue is one we've talked about before, and that is, in the scooter libby indictment, karl rove was identified as official a. it's the term that prosecutors use when they try to get around restrictions on naming somebody in an indictment. we've looked through the records of patrick fitzgerald from when he was prosecuting cases in new york, and from when he's been u.s. attorney in chicago. and in every single investigation, whenever fitzgerald has identified somebody as official a, that person eventually gets indicted themselves, in every single investigation. will karl rove defy history in this particular case? i suppose anything is possible when you're dealing with a white house official. but the lawyers that i've been speaking with, who know this stuff, say, don't bet on karl rove getting out of this.

that report gave an outside deadline of two weeks (may 22) for an indictment to appear. leopold's explosive story, coming just four days after shuster's report, became irresistible to many because it fit the schedule.

but once the deadline passed, speculation took off faster than exxon's profits — something's gone horribly wrong, right?

strangely, no one's really questioned the integrity of the two week deadline itself. the only person who could have lent credibility to the deadline was fitzgerald. but it was never put forth or confirmed by fitzgerald. the two week deadline put forth by schuster came from rove's team:

well, karl rove's legal team has told me that they expect that a decision will come sometime in the next two weeks.

rove may have floated the deadline for his own purposes, in order to sow the speculation, confusion and disappointment that's now descended on everyone following the case.

if so, it is ultimately just a delaying tactic, since any indictment that's finally handed down will be national front page news, and any confusion will be then dispelled. in the meantime, fitzgerald may in fact be working right on schedule all along — his schedule — which, like everything else he's handling in this case, he obviously prefers to keep to himself.

has it been six months yet?

not quite, according to new york times columnist tom friedman:

the next six months in iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there — are the most important six months in u.s. foreign policy in a long, long time. — new york times, "the chant not heard", november 30, 2003

what i absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a un-approved iraqi-caretaker government made up of — i know a lot of these guys — reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. i don't get it. it might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? can we let this play out, please? — npr fresh air, june 3, 2004

what we're gonna find out, bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war. — cbs face the nation, october 3, 2004

improv time is over. this is crunch time. iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. but it won't be won with high rhetoric. it will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile. — new york times, "the last mile", november 28, 2004

i think we're in the end game now. ... i think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt i think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one. — nbc meet the press, september 25, 2005

maybe the cynical europeans were right. maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. that will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the sunnis in iraq intend to be. if they come around, a decent outcome in iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. if they won't, then we are wasting our time. — new york times, "the endgame in iraq", september 28, 2005

we've teed up this situation for iraqis, and i think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together. — cbs face the nation, december 18, 2005

we're at the beginning of, i think, the decisive, i would say, six months in iraq, ok, because i feel like this election — you know, i felt from the beginning iraq was going to be ultimately, charlie, what iraqis make of it. — pbs charlie rose show, december 20, 2005

the only thing i am certain of is that in the wake of this election, iraq will be what iraqis make of it — and the next six months will tell us a lot. i remain guardedly hopeful. — new york times, "the measure of success", december 21, 2005

i think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. in which case, i think the american people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand. — oprah winfrey show, january 23, 2006

i think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, bob. we've got for the first time an iraqi government elected on the basis of an iraqi constitution. either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case america will stick with it, or they're not, in which case i think the bottom's going to fall out. — cbs, january 31, 2006

i think we are in the end game. the next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in iraq. — msnbc today show, march 2, 2006

can iraqis get this government together? if they do, i think the american public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable iraq. but if they don't, then i think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole iraq endeavor. so one way or another, i think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an iraq there worth investing in. and that is something only iraqis can tell us. — cnn late edition with wolf blitzer, april 23, 2006

well, i think that we're going to find out, chris, in the next year to six months — probably sooner — whether a decent outcome is possible there, and i think we're going to have to just let this play out. — msnbc hardball with chris matthews, may 11, 2006

yes, folks, you've heard tom's song before. it's sung to the tune of "turn, turn, turn".

(hat tip to the media researchniks at f.a.i.r.)