by Smitty (h/t Theo Spark)
Reactions to the news were mixed, particularly with the man previously known as the Epitome of Boob:
Respecting Lawrence O’Donnell
by Smitty (via Hot Air)
O’Donnell does a more courageous job of expressing the Progressive Faith than almost anyone else on the Left.
The fact that the Progressive Faith arrives in a sodomized expression of Christianity comes close to triggering a puke reflex. It happens. May Heaven have mercy upon you, Lawrence O’Donnell, and the Holy Spirit grant you the wisdom to grasp that the State is not the Almighty, merely a secular means of de-conflicting group interests.
People seriously interested in the Rich Young Ruler are directed to Bonheoffer, but warned: ol’ Dietrich was never about the feel-good Gospel, right up to the bitter, tragic end.
Update: More at Eternity Matters.
Progressive Economics Fail At The Huffington Post
by Smitty
Over at SOL/PuffHo, they just don’t get the new Progressive Economics. Jobs are what matter. Product? Not so much. Thus, if the State of Illinois pays for signs with spelling errors, that isn’t a bug, that’s a feature! Workers and materials suppliers will be kept busy moving the location of the typo all around the sign. It’s all about jobs saved or created, man!
Created? Why, yes! What may superficially appear to be an increase in societal entropy is really all about job opportunities. New bureaucracies will have to be born to create a staff of people who can interpret the increasingly meaningless signs cluttering the landscape.
After a critical mass is reached, a new academic field will emerge: Progressive English Studies. The old, relatively stable form of English will remain, so that the Ruling Class can continue its course of leisure and oppression of the common dogs, but those common dogs will be increasingly fragmented, divided, and unable to manage parties or tea, much less Tea Parties.
Full circle, then: this humble sign in Illinois, far from a sign of stupidity, is a harbinger of winning the future, full employment, and portion controlled servings.
Yeah, Progress: yeah!
Lest you think this post pure snark, check out the new line of street sign furniture.
Update: linked at House of Eratosthenes.
VIDEO: Obama Sermonizes About This Silly Distraction From His Incompetence
The White House may think it’s sprung a trap, but I think they waited too long. By now — as the polls from earlier this week showing how many independents thought Obama wasn’t born here, and which probably prompted the release decision, indicate — the damage is done.
UPDATE: We now have a White House transcript of the president’s press-conference statement, which gets fact-checked by Conn Carroll:
President Obama claimed that the reason he released his birth certificate today is because the issue had become a distraction. Specifically, he blamed the conspiracy for drowning out his speech earlier this month attacking Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity. . . . That is just plain false.
Read the whole thing at The Washington Examiner.
UPDATE II: Evidently banned by his new corporate overlords from resurrecting his Trig-Truther obstetric inquisition, Andrew Sullivan resorts to nudge-nudge wink-wink mode:
Get over yourselves, MSM. And do your job – not defending the right of people in power to protect themselves, but scrutinizing them relentlessly, with every fact and document you can get. . . . Do you know what I am saying?
Yeah. We know exactly what you’re saying, Andrew.
UPDATE III: Ace of Spades notes that some Birthers just keep on Birthin’ — which is exactly the problem with Sully and Trig Trutherism. Once somebody stakes their political credibility on a particular narrative, they have what might be called a status investment in the truth of that narrative. People who have built reputations as 9/11 Truthers (e.g., Alex Jones) and never going to come out and say, “You know what? This conspiracy-theory stuff is a big steaming pile of hooey. I’ve been a total dupe, an abject fool, a credulous idiot, and I guess everybody who made fun of me was right.”
By the same token, Sully can never admit that his absurd fascination with Trig-Trutherism was the product of his own emotional and intellectual weaknesses. He may eventually just tiptoe away from Trig Trutherism, hoping people will forget what a damned ridiculous spectacle he made of himself, but he wil never ‘fess up and own it.
strong>UPDATE IV: Shocking revelation!
The certificate reveals that the future president was born Barack Hussein Muhammad Jihad Guevara Manson Obama on July 4, 1976, in Pyongyang, North Korea. Not only is he not a natural-born citizen, he’s not even old enough to be president. And his mother, Ethel Rosenburg, lists her religion as “Stalinist.”
That James Taranto, what a kidder . . .
PREVIOUSLY: WATERLOO FOR BIRTHERS: Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate
Donald Trump, Neo-Confederate?
That’s what Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress appears to be suggesting with her report that Donald Trump donated “$25,000 for the post-Katrina restoration of Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s retirement estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”
“Pin the Confederate Tail on the Republican” seems to be a popular progressive game this week, with Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect exulting over a recent poll showing substantial pluralities of Republicans in Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi say they wish the South had won the Civil War.
Dave Weigel noticed that the same poll shows a surprising level of Lost Cause sentiment among Democrats. In fact, the poll found that 22% of Mississippi Democrats wish the South had won the War.
This poll is from the liberal Public Policy Polling firm which, of course, is engaged in anti-GOP propaganda. But I reckon they haven’t considered the possible consequences. One can imagine some crafty operative circulating an anonymous e-mail before next year’s crucial South Carolina primary with the subject line: “Romney: Soft on Race-Mixing?”
UPDATE: Whoopi Goldberg plays the race card — wow, who could have seen that coming, huh? — and welcome, Instapundit readers!
By the way: I was born in Atlanta, Georgia (and have the birth certificate to prove it), yet when it comes to college football, my allegiance has always been to the University of Alabama, because my Dad graduated at Tuscaloosa.
Perhaps you could find a metaphor there. Just sayin’ . . .
Massacre in Mexico
President Obama has plenty of time to worry about Libya, while murderous anarchy is just across the southern border:
Security forces have unearthed six more bodies in a northeastern Mexican border state where a drug gang is believed to be kidnapping passengers from buses and hiding their victims in secret graves, authorities said Tuesday. A total of 183 bodies have been discovered in a month.
The horrific discoveries have intensified criticism that lawlessness reigns in Tamaulipas state, where the Zetas drug gang has terrorized migrants trying to make their way north to the United States. It is the same region where authorities say the Zetas killed 72 Central American migrants in August.
The New York Times reported on the failed state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas near the Gulf Coast:
Open war between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, means that the roads here are still filled with gang lookouts on motorcycles, who report back to cartel leaders, residents say.
Gunmen believed to be tied to the Zetas assassinated the lead candidate for governor last year and later forced a mass exodus from a small town near the Texas border. Extortion payments have become more regular than taxes, security analysts say, while many of the authorities are either terrorized or bought off: 16 municipal police officers have been arrested so far in connection with kidnappings and killings.
And from the latest Stratfor memo on the Mexican situation:
A mass grave was found April 21 in Durango, Durango state. While a great deal of attention has been focused on mass graves discovered in San Fernando attributed to the Zetas, we believe the Durango discovery is important, too, because it is a reminder that the Zetas are not the only Mexican drug-trafficking organization that engages in mass murder.
As of April 26, 58 decomposed bodies had been found in Durango. The state of decomposition indicates that the grave sites had been occupied for many months, longer than the mass graves in San Fernando.
It’s like we’re living next door to Rwanda. Maybe our NATO “allies” can help, huh? U.N. “humanitarian” mission maybe?
WATERLOO FOR BIRTHERS: Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate
UPDATE 12:10 p.m.: VIDEO: Obama Sermonizes About This Silly Distraction From His Incompetence
* * * * *
PREVIOUSLY (9:15 a.m. ET): The White House this morning released Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate, which is now available online as a PDF.
UPDATE: CNN reports:
The White House released President Obama’s original birth certificate Wednesday.
The surprise release follows recent and sustained remarks by businessman Donald Trump, among others, that raised doubts as to whether the president was born in the United States.
White House spokesman Jay Carney is expected to speak more about the birth certificate Wednesday morning.
Wow. Guess their internal polls showed that Trump was really hurting their guy.
UPDATE II: Funny guys on Twitter:
UPDATE III: Associated Press:
White House spokesman Jay Carney says Obama felt the debate over his birthplace had become a “sideshow” that was bad for the country and political debate. . . .
“The president feels this was bad for the country, that it’s not healthy for our political debate,” Carney said.
Translation: “It wasn’t healthy for his re-election prospects.”
UPDATE IV: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
Note that the long form doesn’t have any mention of religion at all, which was one theory as to why Obama was supposedly “hiding” it, nor does it list anyone else as Obama’s father, another speculative bit of nonsense peddled by the birthers. The place of birth box is checked as within city or town limits, signed as thus by the attendant to the birth.
This conspiracy theory should have died three years ago. Now, maybe we can focus on all the ways Obama is failing as President.
Having dismissed the whole controversy as silly from the outset, and having mostly ignored it ever since, I was amazed at how much traction it got when Trump started pounding it in interview after interview.
UPDATE V: Professor William Jacobson had remarked on how much damage Trump was doing.
UPDATE VI: The Lonely Conservative:
I just have to wonder why they didn’t do this two years ago?
The White House press release is here and there is, as might be expected, a massive Memeorandum thread.
Next, I’m waiting for Andrew Sullivan to say, “See there? Now where’s Trig’s birth certificate? What’s Sarah Palin hiding?” In fact, Sully may have already said that, but I haven’t bothered to look yet.
UPDATE VII: Steve Eggleston:
In case you were wondering what it takes to get a copy of the original Certificate of Live Birth out of Hawaii, the White House provided the correspondence between Obama, his private lawyer, and Hawaii Director of Health Loretta J. Fuddy.
UPDATE VIII: You saw this coming, right?
“I’m taking great credit and you have to ask the president, ‘why didn’t he do this a long time ago? Why didn’t he do it a long time ago?’ When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn’t he do it? It’s shocking. It’s shocking,” Donald Trump said at a press conference this morning on President Obama’s birth certificate.
Donald Trump: Not Just a Kook, an Effective Kook.
UPDATE IX: David Frum refers to Birtherism as “the racialist aspect of the anti-Obama movement,” which is rather a large leap. I always compared it to the various strange conspiracy theories about Mena Airport and/or Vince Foster that flourished during Bill Clinton’s first term.
In politics, some people are always more interested in throwing out spooky charges of criminality or fraud than in arguing over policy. You saw this during the Bush administration, with the stuff about Halliburton and Iraq, the claims of rigged voting machines in Ohio, the “Plamegate” controversy and all those wild fantasies about Karl Rove getting indicted.
UPDATE X: Linked by Pirate’s Cove and the Lonely Conservative — thanks! Our favorite Twitter celebrity weighs in:
That settles the question, doesn’t it? If it’s good enough for Alyssa Milano, there can be no further doubt!
UPDATE XI: Linked by Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints.
McDonald’s Beating Suspect
We have a mug shot and a name:
Baltimore County police have named the 18-year-old charged with beating a transgender woman at Rosedale McDonald’s, amid demands from some community members that the incident be investigated as a hate crime.
Teonna Monae Brown of the 2000 block of Kelbourne Road in Rosedale was charged in the attack on Chrissy Lee Polis. The incident was videotaped and went viral online late last week, with hundreds of thousands of views on various websites. The video shows Polis, 22, being kicked and punched in the head by two people until she appears to have a seizure. While one employee and a patron try to intervene, others can be seen standing and watching, and some are laughing.
Brown, who was arrested Friday, has been charged with one count of first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree assault.
Can there be any doubt that Teonna Monae Brown is a right-wing Republican extremist Christian fundamentalist theocrat homophobe?
I think not!
Andrew Sullivan to blame Sarah Palin in 3, 2, 1 . . .
PREVIOUSLY: