Birther Issue Won't Go Away

Among the stereotypically crazy wingnut beliefs is birtherism -- the idea that Barack Obama is really an illegal alien, making him constitutionally unqualified to be president. It's been so widely debunked that there's really no point in doing it again here. Suffice it to say that, if you still buy into this thing, you're either 1) astoundingly ignorant, 2) a gullible ass, or 3) an astoundingly ignorant gullible ass. At this point, it takes a real effort to buy this urban legend. Apparently, there are still plenty willing to make the effort.

In July, a Research2000 poll found that 11% of respondents answered the question, "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?" with "no." As always in these polls lately, it was Republicans who were throwing the curve toward "crazy." 4% of Democrats thought the president was an alien, with 3% saying they weren't sure. 8% of Independents said that Obama wasn't really American and 9% weren't sure.

For Republican voters, it was 28% non-citizen and 30% unsure. 58% of Republican respondents were either birthers or wondered whether birther charges had merit.





In the mainstream media, the birther movement has lost a lot of steam. After a series of frivolous lawsuits turned into a series of humiliating losses, it quickly became clear that this whole birther thing wasn't going to go anywhere. Where there's smoke, there may be fire. But the media realized that there wasn't even smoke. In the average American's mind, the whole thing had blown over.

But, as the poll above shows, Republican voters are most definitely not average Americans. With more than a quarter of GOP voters being genuine birthers and nearly a third still needing to be convinced one way or another, a solid majority -- 58% -- of Republicans are either birthers or birther-friendly. The average Republican voter is an unaverage American, far outside the mainstream. Given the amount of information out there, even being agnostic about the question is an irrational position. If you wonder whether President Obama's an illegal alien, then you're just as much of a crank as someone who's convinced of it. It's like wondering about the existence of Santa Claus; not knowing means you're a nut. If you're not convinced by now, nothing will ever convince you.

Which segues nicely into the nutty '08 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Whether Sarah's an actual birther, a birther agnostic, or an opportunist trying to take advantage of the widespread conspiracy theorism of the GOP base, she tried to use the issue to her advantage recently by questioning the legitimacy of the president's citizenship and, with it, his win last November.

Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin declared on Thursday that the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate is "rightfully" an issue with the American public, and that it is "fair game" for politicians to question Obama's citizenship.

The comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, who asked Palin whether she planned to "make the birth certificate an issue" if she runs for president in 2012.

"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue," Palin said. "I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers."

But she did fault the McCain campaign for not making an issue of it.

"I think it's a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game," she said, telling Humphries "the McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area. We didn't call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don't think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we're seeing manifest in the administration."

And here's where things get fun. These comments got some play and Palin almost immediately backpedaled, turning -- as she always does -- to her fanbase on Facebook. She wasn't a birther, she'd never been a birther, and everyone who said she was was being terribly unfair.

But consider the logic here; if her Facebook posting is true, then Palin was faulting the McCain campaign for not making an issue of a "scandal" she knew didn't actually exist -- i.e., she was willing to lie to get elected. Conversely, if the interview with Humphries was true, then her later Facebook retraction-in-disguise is untrue. Palin has painted herself into a corner where simple logic dictates that she must be lying. Of course, this doesn't hurt her any with her base, since cognitive dissonance is an art form on the right. They are impervious to logic.

But what we're learning here is that the birther issue isn't going to go away. At least one Republican has begun fundraising for '10 using the issue. With a majority of Republican voters at least open to the question, it's nearly impossible for candidates to ignore.

But it's not going to fly with Independents, which presents a problem. Palin tried to have her cake and eat it too and wound up just making a fool of herself. Then again, she's not exactly a master strategist and someone else might just be able to thread that needle better.

In the end, this represents just one more problem facing Republicans in 2010 -- how to address the concerns of the wingnut majority in the GOP without scaring off everyone else. Part of the problem that the McCain/Palin campaign faced was the lynch mob aura that had settled over their later rallies and appearances; i.e., the crazies backing the campaign began to take over the campaign's messaging. McCain tried to rein it in, but it was too late. Once that particular wildfire starts, it's only going to spread. And people other than your base find it off-putting at best and terrifying at worst.

So good luck with that guys. If you're not careful, your campaign appearances are all going to turn into teabagger rallies.

I don't think that's going to work out for you.

-Wisco


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ClimateGate? What About ExxonGate?

In 2007, oil giant ExxonMobil was caught with their pants down. According to a Union of Concerned Scientists report at the time, "...ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science." They documented how the corporation had turned to the same PR firms and scientists-for-sale that Big Tobacco had in the past to cast doubt on their own problem with reality.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said USCS's Alden Meyer. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years."

Included in the report was a leaked internal memo that laid out everything; ExxonMobil had a plan to not only confuse the public on the issue of global warming, but also had a sophisticated strategy to track their progress toward that goal with market research polling and focus groups. In addition to lying to the public about the science behind climate change, they'd keep track of which lies worked best and which lies didn't, in order to determine which were most effective. It was a fullscale marketing campaign.





Of course, once the media got a whiff of this story, there was a huge firestorm. Talking heads freaked out. FOX's Neil Cavuto reassessed his entire belief system -- on live TV. The global warming skeptics and denialists folded up shop. The UN and the US held investigations.

Or, so you'd think from reading about the so-called "ClimateGate." After all, if climate scientists pulling a fast one is earth-shattering news, surely an oil corporation doing the same thing would be too.

But then we have the American media. Proportionality is a foreign concept here and when serious adults in boardrooms try to pull the wool over your eyes, that's business -- even a shrewd move. But when those tree-huggin' hippy scientists do it... Well, that's the worst thing ever.

But are they the same thing? In a word; no. Where the ExxonMobil scandal-that-should've-been was a case of turning blatant dishonesty into a science, the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK are just a bunch of emails. There is no plan to deceive, laid out bare for all to see, no bullet points listing goals a campaign of BS should achieve, no detailed strategy to follow the public's receptiveness to the plan with market research surveys. It's just a handful of emails being interpreted by flatearthers who've already made up their minds.

Some of the "revelations" show only how badly the deniers are stretching to back up their assertions. For example, a scientist in one email refers to a "trick" of using one data set to "hide the decline" in another. Let me show you my trick of stirring pastry dough with two butter knives sometime -- my burger pasties are totally dishonest.

"As for the 'decline'," explains RealClimate, "it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the "divergence problem"–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while 'hiding' is probably a poor choice of words (since it is 'hidden' in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens."

In any case, we can apply logic here; even if some researchers were dishonest in their work, it doesn't mean that global warming has been "debunked," as some are claiming. After all, Piltdown Man doesn't disprove evolution. You might as well argue that airplanes debunk gravity. Scientists stand by the science.

But the question to be asked here is why can ExxonMobil get away with something that is clearly a campaign of lies, while the Climatic Research Unit is under fire from every corner for something that may very well be nothing? This is especially frustrating when you consider the lopsidedness of it all; ExxonMobil's multi-million dollar campaign of lies is lesser than a scientist using questionable math how? On what scale is this measurement being made?

On climate, the scale and scope might as well be universal and the consequences of giving global warming deniers the time of day are too dark. "[I]t is not enough to argue that the science is uncertain," writes the Financial Times' Martin Wolf. "Given the risks, we have to be quite sure the science is wrong before following the sceptics. By the time we know it is not, it is likely to be too late to act effectively. We cannot repeat experiments with just one planet."

-Wisco


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McCarthyism is Rampant, But Failing

McCarthyism. It's a word that conjures up fearmongering, ruined careers and lives, and the suppression of free speech. It suggests lies, tied to ambition, and a ruthless, scorched earth partisanship. There are a lot of political charges flying around these days -- fascism, communism, socialism, elitism, even Nazism -- but few are willing to use the word "McCarthyism." For some reason, Democrats shy away from calling a spade a spade; running in terror from the words "liar" or "criminal" when applied to the Bush administration, for example. We mustn't say impolite things about people who have no hesitation to be impolite toward us. That would be unseemly.

Not even Joe McCarthy himself faced people so unwilling to fight -- at least, not for the same reason, anyway. Where McCarthy's critics faced national censure, along with the destruction of their careers and reputations, today's victims of McCarthyism are motivated to timidity simply from the fear of seeming rude. One doesn't bring attention to the frothing lunatic shrieking about commies taking over and peeing in the punchbowl, one simply makes a mental note not to drink any of the punch. Wouldn't want ruin the party for everyone.

But not everyone is willing to look the other way. In a new report -- "Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks" -- People For the American Way (PFAW) drops the "M-bomb" on the right.





It's rampant. It's on television and radio and it's in the halls of congress. If the right stands for anything these days, it's McCarthyism; baseless, partisan smears attacking people's patriotism and loyalty to their own country. Accusations of de facto treason are everywhere.

Today’s McCarthyism has many faces and voices, including the household names of right-wing cable television, a plethora of radio hosts, Religious Right leaders, right-wing organizations and the bogus “grassroots” campaigns they generate – and Members of Congress and other Republican Party officials. Together they engage in character assassination and challenge the loyalty and patriotism of their targets.

Fox's’s Glenn Beck, who reaches millions of Americans with his televised tirades, has become an almost cartoonish McCarthy clone, with his guilt-by-association charts supposedly detailing the communist connections of White House officials.

In the McCain/Palin campaign, there were charges of elitism and "palling around with terrorists." Talking heads on FOX News seriously discuss whether the president is a Stalinist or just a classic Marxist. As I've pointed out before, the inmates are running the Republican asylum these days. But it's a social faux pas to point out that crazy people are acting like crazy people. It just isn't done.

Luckily, this whole McCarthyism thing doesn't seem to work very well without some sort of Un-American Activities Committee and, as much as Rep. Michelle Bachmann would like to see one, they don't have it.

Without the mantle of legitimacy and authority, McCarthyism finds other outlets. And those outlets aren't exactly constructive. Cue the circular firing squad:

Think Progress:

Glenn Beck, who has waged a conspiratorial, hateful campaign against liberals and his other political enemies all year, has been galvanizing his supporters to run for office. Today, conservative activist Eric Forcade announced that he is running in the Republican primary to unseat longtime Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL). In explaing his reason for running, Forcade said he was inspired by the “values that have been popularized by Glenn Beck.”

Beck’s 9/12 project and its closely related “tea parties” have inspired a number of other challengers to Republican lawmakers deemed insufficiently “pure”...

Among the targets; Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE), Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), and Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL). Especially ironic is this wingnut targeted race:

Even NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee] Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), charged with recruiting Republicans to challenge House Democrats in 2010, is facing a contested primary. Conservative activist David Smith says he will rely on the tea party movement to bring down Sessions.

Without any way to actually gain much from their fear- and hatemongering, the McCarthyites fall on each other like hungry wolves, to use an overused phrase. The "big Republican year" theory about the 2010 elections is looking less and less credible.

But heaven help us if these people come into power.

-Wisco

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Expecting More of Obama

Big night last night. The president's announcement of an escalation of the Afghanistan war managed to make few people happy. On the right, this can be explained -- to a large extent, anyway -- by kneejerk partisanship. For them, Barack Obama can do no right. They don't like that the president set a 18-month timeline to begin withdrawal. But it's not hard to imagine that, had he gone with an Bush-like open-ended commitment, they would be criticizing him for not having an exit strategy.

With the media stuck in the 2008 presidential campaign, it should be less surprising that they keep running to John McCain for reactions to Obama's actions. They don't seem to realize that there is now no way that McCain/Palin can still win it (it's over, guys). But they keep doing it and I keep wondering why. Still, McCain gives what we can call the unofficial Republican response on ABC's Good Morning America today:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said while he agrees with the president's decision to up the number of troops, setting a timeline for withdrawal will only allow the Taliban to regroup and emerge stronger when U.S. forces leave Afghanistan.

"I support the president's decision to have a properly resourced counter insurgency strategy," McCain told "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts today. "My only difference... is setting a date for return... Dates should be determined by success on the ground not by the calendar."

Remember that whole "commanders in the field" thing Bush used to pull? He'd basically argue that the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and, as such, he couldn't do anything that the Pentagon didn't agree with. It didn't make any sense then and it doesn't now, but McCain seemed to buy it at the time. You wonder why he doesn't buy it now.





"I'm absolutely supportive of the timeline," says Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top "commander in the field," "The 18 months timeline, however, is not an absolute. It's not an 18 months and everybody leaves. The president has expressed on numerous occasions a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan and that includes all manners of assistance."

So there's that. Other reactions have been as predictably reactionary.

It seems clear that if we want legitimate criticism of Obama's plan for Afghanistan, we'll have to point our eyes leftward.

MSNBC's FirstRead:

Democrat Russ Feingold (WI) today suggested there is a "significant" number of Senate Democrats with concerns about the administration's plan to increase troops in Afghanistan.

[...]

"I was just in a Democratic conference lunch, and I spoke out on this," he said on the Senate floor. "And I won't say who-said-what, but the number of people who joined me in expressing these very concerns was significant. Many members in my caucus, and I believe members of the Republican caucus -- perhaps from different philosophical prospective -- will come to the same conclusion that this is a mistake to move in the direction of this huge troop buildup."

It sounds like we won't have to look far on the left to get that criticism. A "significant" number can mean a lot of things, but it can't mean "a few." Feingold doesn't really play those word games anyway. Take it from someone who's lived in his state his entire career -- Russ Feingold is blunt. If he says the number is "significant," then it is. Or, at least, he believes it is.

But this leaves everyone on the left -- Obama, those who support his decision, and those who oppose it -- in a difficult position. For Obama, he's already made his concession to progressives -- he's included a timeline for withdrawal. Had this happened with Bush and Iraq, Democrats would've popped the champagne and declared victory. Party hats and whistles all around.

On the other hand, Democrats opposed to the increase have good reason to expect more from Obama than they did of Bush. So it's logical that they would demand more of him than they did of Bush. Where a timeline for withdrawal from Bush would've been acceptable to most Democrats, that acceptance would've been the result of what Bush himself once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

For Obama, there is no such soft bigotry. And this is were the problem stems for everyone. Progressives need to expect more, while Obama seems to believe he can't do more. Something has to give and it's hard to see where the give will be.

-Wisco


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In the Graveyard of Empires

Like most problems his administration faces, Obama inherited the the war in Afghanistan from his predecessor, George W. Bush. And, like most of these Bush legacies, it's the result of incompetence, neglect, and an obsession with neoconservative ideology. Afghanistan is a big pile of military blunders and foreign policy mistakes. Let's look at the military side and just focus on the obvious for a moment.

Afghanistan is well-known as the "graveyard of empires," an impossible terrain in a difficult to reach region of the world. It's nation of mountain ranges with mile after mile of natural fortresses. Fighting a war on two fronts is a classic military mistake and Bush made it by deciding to invade Iraq -- for no good reason. Iraq became the "central front on the war on terror," with Afghanistan becoming a nearly forgotten adventure that popped up in the news occasionally. We were fighting a war in what very well may be the most dangerous region of the world and doing it halfheartedly. Combine this with installing a corrupt puppet government and you could only screw things up worse if you tried.

But it wasn't only Bush who was making strategic mistakes here. At home, especially on the campaign trail, Democrats used the Afghanistan war to beef up their own military bona fides. They pointed out everything that I just have, while thumping their chest and proclaiming themselves better at war. Barack Obama may have inherited the Afghanistan war, but he also used it as political leverage against Iraq war supporters -- he wasn't some hippy-dippy peacenik, he wasn't against war, he just didn't like the Iraq war. Why, lookie here at the Afghanistan war -- now there's a war someone ought to win.





It's impossible to say whether this particular war would've been won or lost by now if the Bush administration hadn't distracted themselves with their fun little snipe hunt in Iraq. But I think it would've been over by now, win or lose. The Bush administration, dominated by starry-eyed dreamers who thought they were neocon supermen, were certain they could have everything and that nothing in history applied to them. They were special, they were the first realists to ever walk the face of the earth, geniuses to a one and pretty damned near infallible.

The result was disaster on all fronts. All they really managed to do was to keep the ball rolling long enough for someone else to come along and fix it all. And Barack Obama was the guy who came along.

New York Times:

President Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan as he prepared to address the nation Tuesday night to explain what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency.

Mr. Obama conveyed his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office and then spent Monday phoning foreign counterparts, including the leaders of Britain, France and Russia.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, declined to say how many additional troops would be deployed, but senior administration officials previously have said that about 30,000 will go in coming months, bringing the total American force to about 100,000.

30,000 is the number everyone seems to be using. If there's anything good to be taken away from this, it's that the kid who fixes the jams in the Obama White House copymachines is probably smarter than anyone in the Bush administration. But this is an unsatisfying takeaway.

If it were me, I'd blow off the classical military strategies in Afghanistan. History shows that this "blow stuff up and kill lots of people" way of doing things doesn't accomplish much. What I would do would be different.

I'd take all the troops that were there now and secure the largest contiguous area we could safely secure. Then I'd turn that area into Awesome City. We're talking freakin' Disneyland here. All the money we'd be spending on blowing things up, we'd spend on building. There are people in Afghanistan who not only don't have electricity, but don't know what electricity is. Simple infrastructure work would look like a miracle to many of them. Move your gaze a few countries over to the middle east; people don't like Hamas because they blow things up, they like them because they build and do charity work. The thing you don't hear about much in the west is that Hamas builds hospitals and schools. They do things their governments fail to do.

We don't have to play a classic offense/defense game -- which history shows is a loser anyway -- we can play a defense/defense game and win the war by fighting it in people's heads. If NATO-controlled Afghanistan is Awesome City and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is Sucktown, where do you think most people are going to want to live? And how much popular support do you think that would leave the Taliban? Who's going to join the Sucktown Defense League?

But, of course, I'm not Commander in Chief. Whatever we do in Afghanistan, Republicans and Democrats should remember that they blew it. Republicans can blame themselves for backing the invasion of Iraq and Democrats can blame themselves pushing Afghanistan to prove they aren't "soft on terrorism" or pacifist pansies.

There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing down the road, but few of those fingers will be attached to clean hands.

-Wisco


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