Think Progress

The ‘Kristol Ball’ plots Palin’s long-shot path to the White House.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol reaffirmed his “contrarian” take on Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) recent decision to quit. The “Kristol Ball” argued that Palin is now “all in” for a “high risk” presidential run. Depending on her “talents and abilities” Kristol used a strained comparison to President Obama to lay out Palin’s winding road to the White House:

KRISTOL: Everyone said [Obama couldn't] compete with people with these long records. … He seems to have gotten President. I don’t think it is foolish for Palin to think, “You know what, if that’s the world we live in now where people don’t value — maybe correctly — experience in years of experience in Washington, or two terms counts more than two and half years as Governor of Alaska. Maybe she thinks she gets out there and becomes a leader of the conservative movement, and then a leader of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a nominee of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a president just as Obama did.

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Kristol has been particularly unreliable as of late, and has been extremely poor in predicting the likely success of would-be presidential candidates. In 2006, he declared that “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary.” Earlier in the program, Karl Rove expressed a less charitable view than that of Kristol, saying, “[E]ffective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it. It is not clear what her strategy is.”

Obama: America was not built by ‘naysayers.’

President Obama devotes his address this week to remembering the “indomitable spirit of the first American citizens” who built this country and the lessons we can apply to the current challenges:

That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil. [...]

These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.

These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.

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Kurtz: Can African-American women objectively cover Michelle Obama?

In his column today, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz devotes his column today to the question of: “Does Race Play a Role in Coverage?” He readily admits that “no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murphy,” but that doesn’t stop him from writing a 1,600-word article raising questions about black women:

Rachel Swarns of the New York Times and The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan were among those herded behind the rope Monday. They and the other main beat reporters — Newsweek’s Allison Samuels, Darlene Superville of the Associated Press and Politico’s Nia-Malika Henderson — have something in common: They are all African American women. [...]

Whether racial and gender identification produces a gauzier, more favorable portrayal of Obama is perhaps too early to judge.

As Adam Serwer observed, “You would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom.”

Rove twitters: Obama officials are ‘ingrates.’

Earlier today, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove expressed his irrational irritation with the Obama White House on his Twitter page, writing the “Ingrates speak,” before linking to a post by Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin:

The post Rove linked to asks whether White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gives “credit to President Bush for the foresight and determination to see the surge through and deliver the results we saw this week.” The answer was “no.” Rubin then went on to lament the White House’s inability to “celebrate America’s accomplishments.”

In coup aftermath, Hugo Chavez seen as the ‘George Bush of Latin America.’

The New York Times reports today that, despite Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s attempts to portray the U.S. as the instigators of last weekend’s coup in Honduras, the Obama administration appears to have out-maneuvered him. Obama “firmly condemned the coup, defusing Mr. Chávez’s charges,” and leaders of other Latin American countries and media outlets seemed unwilling to accept Chávez’s portrayal of “Washington as the coup’s possible orchestrator.” Chávez’s unpopular and belligerent rhetoric inspired Venezualan opposition party Acción Democrática to dub him the “George Bush of Latin America“:

Mr. Obama’s nonconfrontational diplomacy seems to have caught Mr. Chávez off balance. “Chávez is beginning to understand that he’s dealing with someone with a very different approach than his predecessor,” said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy research group. …

Mr. Chávez’s threats of belligerence in Central America led one opposition party here, Acción Democrática, to issue a statement on Monday that was full of irony: “Hugo Chávez has become the George Bush of Latin America.”

Honolulu Star-Bulletin refuses to run WorldNetDaily’s ‘birther’ ad attack against Obama.

Media Matters reported earlier this month that many in the conservative media — including Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Fox Nation, the Washington Times, and the LA Times’s Andrew Malcolm — “have advanced various versions of the discredited myth that Barack Obama has not produced a valid birth certificate, is not a natural-born U.S. citizen, and is not eligible to be president.” Among those pushing this false myth is the right-wing site WorldNetDaily (WND), which last night reported a setback in its conspiracy-driven mission to expose Obama’s true birth origins:

In the latest effort to obtain information that could settle the controversy over Barack Obama’s eligibility for office as a “natural born citizen,” WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah attempted to buy a full-page ad in a Honolulu daily newspaper soliciting assistance in finding documentary evidence of his birth in the city Aug. 4, 1961, as he claims in his autobiography. … [T]he copy was rejected [by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin] – the latest turndown by a growing list of media companies that won’t touch the birth certificate issue even for money.

“I spoke to my publisher and unfortunately we cannot accept the ad because it is political,” explained Cyd Kamakea, classified advertising manager.

A number of billboard companies have also rejected ads from WND that ask, “Where’s the birth certificate?”

Obama considering an executive order allowing indefinite detention.

The Washington Post reports today that Obama administration officials are possibly “crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.” Impetus for the executive order comes from officials being “increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible.” Additionally, such an order “could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation.” Over on The Wonk Room, CAP’s Ken Gude explains that while there are still concerns over the emerging policy, “it would be a significant improvement over the Bush administration and would go a long way towards cleaning up the mess at Guantanamo”:

After Congress’ pathetic performance during consideration of Guantanamo funding in the supplemental appropriations bill, it is now evident that no matter how well-intentioned the president and some responsible members are, Congress is not a reliable partner. Whatever would emerge from the sausage grinder risks being far worse than even the already unacceptable status quo. [...]

[Obama's order] would be a significant shift from the Bush administration’s policy that swept into U.S. military detention virtually anyone suspected of terrorist activity captured anywhere in the world. It would restore the bright line between criminal and military detention, a crucial distinction to preserve not just in the United States, but also in other countries that look to or use the U.S. as an example.

There are still ambiguities about whether or not there actually is a draft executive order, as Time’s Michael Scherer notes. Spencer Ackerman spoke to Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Policy, who also said that if Obama “issues an executive order like the one [the Washington Post story describes], it’ll be a major victory.” However, Glenn Greenwald, Digby, the ACLU, and the Center for Constitutional Rights still have significant concerns about the possible order. Steve Benen has more here.

Limbaugh: Obama is ‘behaving like an African colonial despot.’

On his radio show today, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh quoted at length from a new article in the American Thinker entitled, “Obama, the African Colonial” by L.E. Ikenga who identifies herself as a “first generation born West African-American woman.” In the article Ikenga argues that Obama is best understood through his “identification with his father” and his adoption of a “political mindset rooted in post colonial Africa”:

Like many educated intellectuals in post colonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign “isms”, instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

Ikenga concludes, “[U]nderstand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.” Limbaugh took Ikenga’s argument and ran with it, declaring that Ikenga “nailed who the guy is.” “We’ve elected somebody who’s more African in his roots than he is American…and is behaving like an African colonial despot,” Limbaugh said. Listen here:

Maryland GOP group distances itself from letter comparing Obama to Hitler: We ‘never approved it.’

As former TP editor Judd Legum reported earlier this week, the website of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County — “one of Maryland’s most prominent Republican organizations” — prominently featured a letter from RWAAC President Joyce Thomann that compared Obama to Hitler. “Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view,” she wrote. That letter has now been taken down and replaced with an “urgent message“:

The article put on our web site by Joyce Thomann was done solely by her. Our Board of Directors never saw the article and would never have approved it. We are not in support of Mrs. Thomann’s personal thoughts ot [sic] opinions.

Ms. Thomann’s husband, Charles, told the Baltimore Sun that the letter “wasn’t meant in the way people are taking it.” He conceded that “maybe she wasn’t as artful as she could have been,” but said the main point was still valid: “The methods that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [President] Obama are using to get the socialist view point across, is similar to what Hitlder [sic] did. … I happen to be a history teacher.”

Maryland GOP group: ‘Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common.’

Today, former TP member Judd Legum reports that the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County, “one of Maryland’s most prominent Republican organizations,” has launched a vicious attack on President Obama. Featured prominently on the front page of the group’s website is a letter from RWAAC President Joyce E. Thomann, who explicitly equates Obama with Hitler:

Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view. Obama and Hitler use the “blitzkrieg” method to overwhelm their enemies. FAST, CARPET BOMBING intent on destruction. Hitler’s blitzkrieg bombing destroyed many European cities – quickly and effectively. Obama is systematically destroying the American economy and with it AMERICA. First the banking/investment industry, next private enterprise (GM and Chrysler) and now HEALTH CARE. And he is working on grabbing more of the American economy with his environmental extremism!

We too CAN fight back. Contact everyone you know. Start a blitzkrieg of our own. Shut down the Capitol switchboards and the White House switchboards! Say NO to the Obamination of Obama Care!

After attacking Obama for it, Krauthammer refers to Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader.’

Last Friday, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer disdainfully attacked President Obama for referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “Supreme Leader” of Iran. “‘Supreme Leader’? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator,” wrote Krauthammer. But during an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show today, Krauthammer himself referred to the ayatollah as “Supreme Leader”:

KRAUTHAMMER: And the reason he did it is that he thinks he needs to preserve his relations with the existing regime so that he can negotiate nuclear disarmament with them, which in and of itself is a lunatic fantasy. It’s not going to happen. There’s no way he’s going to sweet talk, you know, the Supreme Leader out of his nukes. So, that was the point. He thought that if I support the protesters too much, I alienate and I prevent the relations with the government and I can’t.

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The New Republic’s Chris Orr notes that Krauthammer also referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader” days before his column attacking Obama for using the phrase was published. This isn’t surprising, considering that top conservatives have regularly referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader.”

Will calls right-wing attacks on Obama’s Iran response ‘foolish criticism.’

Since turmoil broke out in Iran over the country’s disputed elections last week, conservatives have been forcefully criticizing President Obama for not doing enough to intervene on the side of those protesting. Their criticism comes despite numerous expert opinions — even from Iranian human rights activists — that the U.S. should not meddle in the situation. This morning on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued the attacks. “He’s been timid and passive more than i would like,” he said of Obama. Later on the program though, conservative columnist George Will called such criticism “foolish”:

WILL: The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

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In her Wall Street Journal column yesterday, Peggy Noonan, another conservative columnist and former speechwriter for President Reagan, denounced the right-wing attacks, particularly those from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous,” she wrote, adding that “the ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week.”