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.

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"!

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):

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.)

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.