Click here to view this media Michele Bachmann of course refused to walk back her comments that the Obama administration is a “gangster government” on Meet the Press this week, but as Steve Benen noted , she also seems to have a great deal of trouble with any consistency to this argument. Of course not. Bachmann started using this line nearly two years ago — it never really caught on with anyone else — so she obviously isn’t prepared to walk it back. Indeed, it’s part of a larger case the hysterical right-wing lawmaker has pushed repeatedly: this White House reminds her of an organized crime syndicate, using ruthless, Chicago-style hardball tactics intended to intimidate anyone who gets in the president’s way. It’s absurd, but it’s a picture Bachmann has tried to paint. What’s interesting, though, is that Bachmann has also made the exact opposite argument , just as often. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) launched a verbal assault on President Obama this weekend, claiming that his foreign policy stance was so weak that it made “Jimmy Carter look like a Rambo tough-guy.” I can see one argument or the other, but both at the same time? President Obama, we’re told, is both too tough and too weak. He’s overly aggressive and overly passive. He’s a ruthless mobster and a feeble pushover. Is it too much to ask that right-wing personalities pick one or the other? They can’t both be true. He’s correct but consistency and telling the truth aren’t exactly Michele Bachmann’s strong points, are they? As long as she’s never punished by the electorate for her nonsense, she’s got no reason to stop. Transcript below the fold. GREGORY: Let me ask you about 2012. There’s talk that you’re considering a run for the presidency. And I wonder what you make of how people react to you. A lot of people think that you are an extremist, somebody who, you know, as you’ve done in the past, called the administration “a gangster government,” is far more interested in fueling anger than becoming something of a consensus politician who can attract widespread support. How do you react to all that? BACHMANN: I haven’t made a decision either way about plans for 2012. What my concern is, is that our country move forward and that we regain a sound financial footing. I don’t believe that Barack Obama has done a good job as president of the United States. I think that’s beared out statistically on everything from anemic job creation to the out of control spending and deficits. The economy is simply not improving. Just consider, the day before the president took office gasoline was $1.83 a gallon. There are places today in the United States where it is over $4 a gallon. It didn’t help that the president had the Interior secretary cancel 77 oil leases as soon as the president came into power. We can do so much better. And that’s what I’m talking about with people in the next few months. We need to think very strongly–a second administration of Jimmy Carter wouldn’t have done this country any favors. We need to make sure we don’t have a second Barack Obama administration. GREGORY: You’ve referred to the Obama administration as a gangster government. You’ve said that this President has anti-American views. Do you believe that still? BACHMANN: I believe that the actions of this government have– have– been emblematic of ones that have not been based on true American values. Just consider Obama Care. Over 900 waivers have been given out to unions and protected special interests that are linked to the president. GREGORY: Is it appropriate to refer to the government as a gangster government and to question whether this President loves America? BACHMANN: Well, I said I do believe that actions that have been taken by this White House, I don’t take back my statement on gangster government. I think that there have been– actions that have been taken by this government that I think are corrupt– GREGORY: And you think the President has anti-American views? BACHMANN: Well, it– I’ve already answered that question before. I said I had very serious concerns about the President’s views. And I think the President’s actions in the last two years speak for themselves.
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As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was lambasted by numerous liberal media outlets for comments he made to conservative radio host Steve Malzberg regarding President Obama's past. Surprisingly joining in the harsh criticism was George Will whose column to be published in Sunday's Washington Post also excoriated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as Malzberg: If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party. Will then quoted one of Malzberg's many questions to Huckabee during his Febuary 28 interview, and actually said the former governor's answer should have been, “I've seen paranoia, goodbye.” After noting some of Huckabee's actual answer, Will continued: Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich , who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mentality. After indirectly referring to Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes piece from last year involving Obama's Kenyan anti-colonial worldview, and how Gingrich spoke of it to National Review's Robert Costa, Will concluded: To the notion that Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama's natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America's academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya? Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons. What is one to make of Will going after two prominent Republicans this way, especially as Huckabee is currently leading the possible GOP candidate field according to a just-released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll ? After a snippet of Will's piece was published by Politico early Friday morning, it was all the rage at MSNBC getting covered by Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow on their respective programs. One can only imagine how much play this will get in the next 48 hours, as liberal media members love quoting conservative commentators when they go after folks on the right. Will, of
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As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was lambasted by numerous liberal media outlets for comments he made to conservative radio host Steve Malzberg regarding President Obama's past. Surprisingly joining in the harsh criticism was George Will whose column to be published in Sunday's Washington Post also excoriated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as Malzberg: If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party. Will then quoted one of Malzberg's many questions to Huckabee during his Febuary 28 interview, and actually said the former governor's answer should have been, “I've seen paranoia, goodbye.” After noting some of Huckabee's actual answer, Will continued: Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich , who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mentality. After indirectly referring to Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes piece from last year involving Obama's Kenyan anti-colonial worldview, and how Gingrich spoke of it to National Review's Robert Costa, Will concluded: To the notion that Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama's natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America's academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya? Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons. What is one to make of Will going after two prominent Republicans this way, especially as Huckabee is currently leading the possible GOP candidate field according to a just-released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll ? After a snippet of Will's piece was published by Politico early Friday morning, it was all the rage at MSNBC getting covered by Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow on their respective programs. One can only imagine how much play this will get in the next 48 hours, as liberal media members love quoting conservative commentators when they go after folks on the right. Will, of
Continue reading …Chris Matthews Swoons Again: ‘Everything’ Obama’s Done ‘Has Been Good for This Country’
March 4, 2011 No Comment
Professional Obama fan Chris Matthews appeared on Friday's edition of the Martin Bashir show to slam the President's critics and to swoon, ” Everything he's done has been good for this country .” Matthews went on an extended rant against those who oppose Obama, theorizing, “…They go back to the old nativist root, this old dark night of the soul thing that people worry about, a black man in a White House. And they start working on that. 'Oh, he's a Mau Mau. He goes back to a Muslim background.'” Indirectly referring to columnists such as Dinesh D'Souza , who has highlighted political beliefs of Obama's father and grandfather, Matthews attacked, “It's using race. It's using the paranoid fear of whites of black males against this President whose life has been spotless, has been the American dream.” Yet, when George W. Bush gave his farewell speech on January 15, 2009 , the Hardball host did his own theorizing about the then-President and his father: “He was a rich kid driving his father's car. He got to be President because of his father, let's face it, the same way he got into school and everything else, the same way he got his car probably. After an extended bout of praising Obama, Bashir regained control of the show and ended the segment by enthusing, “Chris, I gotta draw you to a close, but that's the best pep talk I've heard for a long time. So, thank you so much.” A partial transcript of the March 4 segment, which aired at 3:03pm EST, follows: MARTIN BASHIR: In watching you recently, you've been uncompromising in the way you've highlighted the very personal nature of the attacks on the President. CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right. BASHIR: Beginning with the issue of his personal faith. Now if you read his books, as I have, he's abundantly clear that he's a Christian. If you ask him the question, he says his faith rests in Jesus Christ, the Christian gospel and yet not a day passes without somebody suggesting the man's a Muslim. Now, why? MATTHEWS: Well, let me get to the heart of that. I'm going to talk about it on my comment tonight and it's going to be very tough. When you start talking about the Mau Maus of the 1950s, when you talk about revolutionary black Africans killing white people, you're reopening, you're really ripping the scab off of an old wound in America, the fear of southern whites of a slave revolt. That's exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about Nat Turner is what you're talking about. When you talk about Mau Maus of the '50s, you go back to the this guy's grandfather experience, a grandfather he never met, a father he only barely met. I think one occasion. And using that as some sort of predictor, as Newt Gingrich would say, of this man's behavior and policy is horrible. It's using race. It's using the paranoid fear of whites of black males against this President whose life has been spotless, has been the American dream, all merited by him and his hard work and his commitment to get ahead in life and going to Harvard Law and becoming head of law review, not going off and making a ton of money, serving the country. Everything he's done has been good for this country. And then to go back and try to use this ethnicity against him, and in fact, as you point out, that isn't even accurate. Not only is it not only- not only is he not part of the Mau Mau revolt, and knew nothing of it, except what you and I know from reading, he knows, probably as much. And to try to play the religious card too. I mean, religion, we have no religious test. It's written in the Constitution. He has expressed himself as a Christian rather beautifully. And, by the way, on the American front, no one has ever been more beautiful in their description of American exceptionalism than this President. From the first time most of us met him, when I first really got to know him in 2004 up in Boston at the beautiful speech when he talked about his life in saying only in this country is my story possible. Has anyone ever said it better? BASHIR: I don't believe they have. But it does seem remarkably hypocritical that some of those who smear his religious beliefs, they call themselves Christians. Now, what kind of Christian is it that is happy to peddle complete falsehoods, utter lies, about the President? MATTHEWS: Well, I guess you have to have three marriages to start with, if you're Newt Gingrich. I don't know what the roles are these days about hypocrisy. You used the word. I mean, give this man a break, who doesn't need a break, and maybe you'll get a break. If you're asking for forgiveness from God or the people like Newt Gingrich is, how about starting with a guy who has done nothing wrong and stop attacking him? Stop going after him through his ancestors, if you're going to be Christian, act it. BASHIR: The First Lady has also- MATTHEWS: And if you're going to ask if a person's a Christian, how about being one yourself in terms of your own behavior. And I don't think anyone thinks it's fair what happened this week. George F. Will, who I respect for his thinking, even if I don't agree with him, has a column coming out on Sunday, his syndicated column, and he has 500 newspapers he's in, George Will said, this is destroying the Republican Party. This weird kind of talking, this strange kind of behavior, where you have a good economic issue to fight. There is a concern about a serial decline in American hopes. There is great things to argue about. The whole industrial part of the country in the northern Great Lakes region is suffering badly. There's great issues to be raised. Instead they go back to the old nativist root, this old dark night of the soul thing that people worry about, a black man in a White House. And they start working on that. “Oh, he's a Mau Mau. He goes back to a Muslim background. Let's start working that old vein again, that good old nervous paranoid vein again” The fact that they're doing that makes you wonder why they're running. BASHIR: But, Chris, they're not- But, Chris, they're not- Chris, they're not just stopping with him, are they?
Continue reading …Fox talkers are shocked that Obama privately sees racism lurking in the Tea Parties
March 4, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media The folks at Fox News were all worked up yesterday about an excerpt that slipped out from Kenneth Walsh’s new book, Family of Freedom : …But Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent “Tea Party” movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted on their mortgages, and the poor, but wasn’t helping them nearly enough, he said. A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to “take back” their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn’t dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a “subterranean agenda” in the anti-Obama movement-a racially biased one-that was unfortunate. But he sadly conceded that there was little he could do about it. Everyone from Hannity to Bret Baier ran segment expressing shock and horror that, in private, Obama recognizes what he’s declined to say in public — namely, the stone cold truth that a large chunk of the Tea Parties’ ranks are filled with people who despise the idea of having a black man as their president. The funniest was Megyn Kelly’s segment with Michael Reagan, who adopted the standard storyline at Fox — namely, that the Tea Parties are filled with nothing but Real Americans, and therefore dissing them is tantamount to attacking sacred Americanhood itself. Of course, they never really explain why Obama should pay any respect whatsoever to a fake “movement” ginned up for the sole purpose of opposing every single policy he intends to try enacting. The Tea Parties were expressly anti-Obama affairs from the start, and indeed their earliest organizers were outfits like Our Country Deserves Better PAC, set up explicitly with the purpose of stopping Obama and his agenda. Yet Reagan even tried pretending that the Tea Parties were full of people who voted for Obama: REAGAN: Now it’s interesting, that same Tea Party went out there and elected Allan West in Florida, the same Tea Party goes to Herman Cain to speak at so many of their events across this country. Many of those people in the Tea Party probably voted for Barack Obama back in 2008 — not knowing that when he went into office he was going to take over General Motors, he was going to destroy the economy of the United States of America and make the government the big grand poobah, if you will, of creating jobs, not the public sector. Some quick factual points: — Only 5 percent of the Tea Partiers polled in 2009 identified as former Democrats. The rest identified as Republicans or Independents. (No one seems to have ever polled Tea Partiers to ask them how they voted in 2008, but having attended many Tea Party events, I would guess that the 5 percent who identified as Democrats in those polls are probably the sole Obama voters at best — since a number of them include disgruntled Hillary supporters.) — The GM bailout has in fact proven a real success story — not to mention that this is some “takeover”: the feds are selling off their shares of GM stock as quickly as they can, actually. — George W. Bush and the Republicans who ran Congress from 2001 to 2006 destroyed the economy. It collapsed in September 2008, two months before Barack Obama was elected president. Not that facts matter much to propagandists like Michael Reagan and Megyn Kelly, or for that matter the ignorant and frequently racist boobs who largely populate the Tea Parties. But we thought you might find them handy.
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Eddie Huff with Gov. Mike Huckabee Huckabee & Fischer Agree Obama’s Childhood Instilled “Fundamental Anti-Americanism” In Him Complete Bryan Fischer Interview With Mike Huckabee Mike Huckabee and the Balinese Mau Mau « The Reality-Based Community Of the current crop of Republican contenders for the White House, Mike Huckabee scares me the most, because of his many virtues: sanity, intelligence, humor, partial independence from the plutocracy, and a sense of proportion. … Dim Bulb: Mike Huckabee | The Examiner | Dim Bulb | Washington … Who: Mike Huckabee What: Claimed that President Obama was raised in Kenya, which led to his political ideology. Even Mike Huckabee … – Parabasis By Isaac Butler How mainstream are lies about Obama’s life and background? Even Mike Huckabee will perpetuate them. Huckabee’s not an idiot. He has to know (As its a matter of public record and in Obama’s memoir) that Obama met… Mike Huckabee Blames the Media, Obviously — Daily Intel He tries, but fails, to convincingly defend himself. In fact, he digs himself a deeper hole. Mike Huckabee Doubles Down: Obama Has A “Different Worldview” From … A day after apologizing for an odd comment about the President’s upbringing, Mike Huckabee now feeds into the conservative myth that Barack Obama isn’t a real American. MsKittyAlvarez says: Mike Huckabee is leading in the polls and I'm afraid…very afraid.. #JustSaying #P2 #TCOT
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Mark Levin on Huckabee and Palin Mike Huckabee: Obama Raised in Kenya – 2/28/2011 MSNBC’s Matthews, O’Donnell, Schultz and Uygur Cherry-pick Huckabee to Make Him a Birther AMERICAblog News: Huckabee goes birther, claims (wrongly) that … News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective. Huckabee claims Obama grew up in Kenya – ContraCostaTimes.com WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested in a radio interview that President Barack Obama s childhood in Kenya shaped his worldview — even though Obama did not visit Kenya until he was in his 20s. Mike Huckabee | Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and … Whether Mr. Huckabee is a birther or not isn’t the issue and anyone covering for him, as Andy Barr of Politico does, and providing room for him to weasel out of this is falling for the charming Southern former Arkansas governor who … » Huckabee Won't Correct His Kenya Lie Himself – Irregular Times After news of Huckabee’s wild lie about Barack Obama spread, Huckabee went silent himself. He sent out a spokesman, J. Hogan Gidley, to assert that Huckabee “merely misspoke” and that Huckabee “meant to say the president grew up in … Why Huckabee Is A Liability | RedState Let’s give the Huckabuck the double facepalm for these dumb comments: Mike Huckabee , the former governor of Arkansas and a possible Republican presidential. jdhwi says: Huckabee : Obama Was Raised in Kenya (Updated) http://t.co/x61qv9o via @motherjones
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