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BK Adams, H St, NE

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#Big_Up #D.C.

Cool "Disco" Dan

also see BORF

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Frum Finds Needle in Haystack

h/t Cardsplayer4life

@DavidFrum tossed this grenade on twitter today:
"Cornel West attacks Obama as "too comfortable" with smart Jews. http://bit.ly/ko69nT"

At first glance, Frum's tweet has the perhaps not unintended effect of leaving the reader with a sense that either Barack Obama or Cornel West is an anti-semite of the Mel Gibson variety. As a tweet, it's quite effective. By mentioning President Obama, philosopher West, and implying anti-semitism, Frum rounds the bases in one short sentence. You get a nice grouping of Obama with "radical" Blacks who stereotype Jews. One has to appreciate the talent involved in packing that much gasoline into less than 140 characters. Well played sir.

Frum's link leads to the second page of Chris Hedges' May 16th TruthDig column, "The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic," which painstakingly details Professor West's beef with the President. Hedges' column explains West's two-fold personal and political disappointment in Obama's apparent concessions to the ultra-wealthy elite. On one hand, the Professor seems insulted that the President had not done more to personally interact, respond, and thank him for his support during the campaign, which seems sort of petty but whatever. On the other, West is infuriated by seemingly counter-productive actions such as Obama's appointment of Timothy Geitner and Larry Summers to oversee a corrupt financial sector whose corruption they themselves participated in. This attack seems fair. Appointing Summers and Geitner to oversee the financial sector is sort of like appointing FEMA's Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown to oversee the current Mississippi flood. Like, didn't he screw that up the first time?

You may be wondering at this point, where Jews fit into all this.

It's clear from Professor West's quotes in Hedges' column that he's personally salty with the President, leading him to the sort of "you a house n!@@a" character assassination I'd hoped we left behind in the late eighties. West:

"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says."

In it's own way, West's critique of Obama isn't much different than the sort Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, or Dinesh D'Souza deal in. Along the lines of Gingrich's, "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]?"

But West only mentions Jews in passing. As far as I can tell, the word Jewish appears ONCE in the entire lengthy article. To take, "Cornel West attacks Obama as "too comfortable" with smart Jews" from one passing mention of comfort with middle-class, white, AND Jewish men in a long article focused on personal insult, the financial sector, politics, race, and so on, seems ... hmm what's the word, disingenuous ... at best.

Still, nice tweet. Sphere: Related Content

McCain Sets Record Straight on Torture

Former George W. Bush officials and like-minded Conservatives have wasted no time congratulating themselves for the killing of Osama Bin Laden despite the order, mission, and completion of the deed occurring under the leadership of President Obama. At least one such congratulatory claim, that enhanced interrogation techniques; torture; revealed information leading to Bin Laden, came under fire this week. In a WaPo op-ed, Wednesday, Senator John McCain revealed that not only did enhanced interrogation NOT lead to the capture of Bin Laden, it in fact provided false information:

"I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.


In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means."

Don't believe the hype. Torture debases our Nation, and it simply doesn't work.

h/t Carlos Latuff for image Sphere: Related Content

Myth of the Independent Voter ii

WaPo reports on a new Pew study suggesting that the Myth of the Independent Voter still holds true. Myth, the 1992 independent voter report, made a persuasive case that most Independents (two-thirds) are partisans who vote party line. In other words, most independent voters are Democrats and Republicans who don't have the balls to claim their party. WaPo on the Pew study:

Among the increasingly growing segment of Americans who identify with neither party and call themselves independents, there are fewer moderates. Many in the “middle” hold strong, ideological views. The study concluded that three groups in the center of the Pew typology “have very little in common, aside from their avoidance of partisan labels.”

“What we see is a much bigger and increasingly diverse middle,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew center. “What’s striking about it is that they’re not so moderate. People in the middle have some strong, well-defined ideological points of view.”

The idea that there is some large bloc of independent voters that can be swayed one way or another is a myth. In reality there are Democrats and Republicans with a shadow contingent attached to each party that refuses to identify themselves but still reliably votes partisan. Look, independents, just man up and say you're a Dem or Repub, you're not fooling anybody except yourselves.


Interested in political science? Learn about great degrees at GuideToOnlineSchools.com Sphere: Related Content

Ethered

via The Daily Conversation

As @Miss_Info noted, Trump got ethered.

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Killing Bin Laden

h/t Josh Pesavento

Maybe, given the nature of this war against Al-Qaeda, the operation resulting in the death of Osama Bin Laden is the closest Americans will get to a VE Day.

Still, I'm ambivalent about celebrating death. I understand. We've been through such a sustained period of darkness: unemployment; wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya; natural disasters. We needed something to celebrate. But, as @2tuffdc tweeted yesterday:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." - Martin Luther King Jr."

[apparently, this quote comes not from Dr. King, but instead from Jessica Dovey and Penn Jillette. Regardless, I agree with the sentiment.]

Then I think about the faces of the cheering crowds on May 2nd. Mostly kids, young adults. People that were maybe ten years old on 9/11. Young people who've lived with the spectre of Bin Laden looming over them for half their lives. Killing the boogey man must feel good. Sphere: Related Content