Van Jones, Meet The Bottom Of The Greyhound - Let's keep it honest: there's no defending some of the Negro Nonsense soundbytes that Jones put out there. In fact, there's really no defending the fact that Jones had the Green Jobs Special Advisor[1] gig in the first place.
Since we're clearly doing some purging of the ranks, let me suggest the next head to meet the gallows: Valerie Jarrett. It's her job to properly vet candidates for these positions (they are allowed to circumvent te usual confirmation process) and she's clearly too busy doing spreads for Vogue to be bothered with the nuisance of her Day Job. See what happens when you hire your buddies, rather than actual, real, qualified folks? And yeah, I'm well aware that I was the main Negro complaining about there not being enough Black faces in the Obama Administration. I guess I've learned my own lesson from all this. I suppose Glenn Beck actually won this time, which is scary on many levels.[2]
Obama Doesn't Want To Turn Your Kids Into Cossaks - Sooo, the Obama Administration gives in (notice a pattern here?) to the winguts yet again, and decides to release the much maligned speech a day early, just to make right wingers look like the crazed pack of hyenas they are. Seriously, what did ya'll expect? It's innocuous, mundane, color-by-numbers "inspirational" blather for ages 5-18. It wasn't written by Jeremiah Wright.
You'd think this would quell the dissent, but listening to talk radio today, I heard dozens of callers still saying they'll keep their kids at home because the speech had "activist" language like "curing AIDS and world hunger". Even more folks suggested their real concern all along wasn't Obama, but "unionized teachers" who'll use the occasion to spread their liberal viewpoints to impressionable youngsters. I can not make this stuff up.[3]
D-Day For Obama Admin Is Tomorrow - I'm gonna go ahead and put it on record: I am expecting Obama to be definitive in tomorrow night's speech. I don't want soaring rhetoric, I don't want a bunch of crap about "building a bipartisan consensus", I don't want more pointless platitudes. I want to hear a man with a plan.
Whether or not that plan includes a public option is a wash to me at this point. Just have a freakin' plan, and articulate it. It's really that simple. And if Obama can't do that, then he no longer has my support (for now at least) as President. Period. I'll run our quarterly "AverageNation™ Obama Approval Rating Poll" later this week, just to see what ya'll think.
Question: Did Van Jones need to kick rocks? Who deserves this blame for this debacle? Does Valerie Jarrett need to be shipped back to Chi-Town? Do parents who still hold their kids out of school today deserve a visit from CPS? What do you need to hear from Obama in tomorrow night's big speech?
[1] Sorry, I am not calling anyone a freakin' Czar. Enough with the hyperbole. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of how to use Google can tell you these folks have very little unchecked power. But of course, the term "czar" fits nicely with the whole "socialist/communist" language of Obama detractors, so who's counting?
[1] So, since wingnuttery is now officially grounds for expulsion from public service, does this mean every GOP operative and candidate who supports the "birthers" movement needs to also resign? Just curious?
[3]How ironic is it that the Florida GOP leader who started this whole nonsense is actually sending his own kids to school to hear the speech today?
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Van Jones: 9/11 Truther fail. Good riddance, wingnut.
Speech to Kids: Nice rope-a-dope from the administration. Some people are too pissed off to see anything good from the White House... so a little bait-and-switch, the crazies freak out, and whoops! we're not talking about healthcare! It was like a reverse Gates episode.
D-Day: I'm thinking Waterloo is a more appropriate battle to compare this speech with...
@ Spool
You'll need to explain to me how the right wing making much ado over a speech that was scheduled months ago is somehow a "bait & switch"?
If your buddies on rightwing talk radio hadn't picked this up and made a story where none existed, wouldn't we still be talking about HC?
If nothing else, it seems like an overzealous batch of Conservatives have both distracted from the real issue (HC) and ended up with egg on their faces at the same time. And they're so zapid they don't even realize it.
The GOP 09' in a nutshell.
What I mean is... Rahm had to know that in the current climate, putting out an after-speech worksheet like the 1st draft was going to get some people red-faced. Then, after the explosion, they released a 'revised' and totally innocuous set of materials. Then they release the video a day early, to keep the talk going...
I think The White House made a gamble that Beck and the rightwing fringe would lose it, and in doing so distract from the healthcare debate. I think it was a calculated move to do just what you describe... leave the right wing with egg on its face and make them seem irrational.
Obama might even use the episode tomorrow, to further polarize and fragment his opponents on healthcare.
So you're saying the WH intentionally wanted half of America to believe Obama was about to "indoctrinate" their youngsters, all in the name of detracting from a HC debate that's been ongoing to weeks and honestly has petered out in recent days?
Really?
If the WH is guilty of anything, it's giving low-hanging fruit to the right that they know they'll bite on and therefore make themselves look even nuttier. I'm not so sure this is such an example though.
BTW, did you READ the revised copy? The only thing changed really was the point about writing the letters. That point is one about about 25 that the lesson plan addressed, most of which were pretty inane.
Seriously, the right is just digging itself deeper and helping Obama look like the sane one.
Notice that while support for the Dems (and Obama) has waned in recent months, approval ratings for the GOP also just continues to sink.
Wonder why?
These right winged nuts have long fallen overboard. Anytime anyone can say a few words to encourage kids and others to embrace education I'm all for it. These people are damn fools! I've tead the speech. I confess I will read it again to search for the activst call (real or imaginary). No one will come out and admit that they live to create a natiion of fear about our President. And yes intelligence can be perceived as dangerous to those so willing to remain unenlightened..
In terms of Cabinet members...we're too often our own worst enemies. I will not even try to explain this mess...
And Wednesday night, I have no expectations. Presidents are like CEO's- they take the blame, they love the credit but they have little to do with the actual work. If President Obama makes no progress, has no plan and produces more rhetoric, look to all the other elected officials and make them accountable for wasting their voice and the votes of the people who placed them in Washington!
1. Yes.
2. Obama.
3. Yes.
4. Nothin'. Just waiting for the mid-terms where the Dems get their clock cleaned, then 2012, when they finally all get kicked out of office.
Obama needs to grow a pair.
Of FANGS!
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Absurdly, I STILL don't know just what Van Jones said, because I cannot hear it and Google isn't helping much. Who would have thought having busted sound drivers would consistently keep me from what's going on in AverageNation?
If the mood around here is that Jones had it coming, I may have to reassess, because I had chalked this one up to another head on the pike of the same rightwing media mob who scalped Dan Rather. (I was also looking at this as little more than Beck's petty revenge for the Color of Change boycott, but I've seen it said that Beck started dishing out dirt on Jones BEFORE the boycott, so I'm not sure.
Obama is weak. Just flat-out weak. He has no teeth. But that's only partly his fault. In a sane world, in a healthy political culture, those like him would be seen as strong and a good example. The Republican Party and its foot soldiers have so twisted our politics, they've guaranteed that there is no room for Obama's brand of mature, conciliatory governance. Obama and his ship of fools may be dumfoundingly naive for not understanding this from the get-go, but the blame for the farcicaly angry mood in this country is purely the fault of those snickering snivelling reprobates who simply do not care WHAT the consequences of their fearmongering are. Sickening.
Yes this guy had made some bonehead quotes but this was basically Beck's way to get back at the Color of Change boycott. The President clearly caved to Beck's bating. The sad fact is that throwing this guy under the bus will never satisfy wing-nuts who think the President is a illegal alien who is hell bent on turning America into a communist dictatorship. If one keeps reaching over to the other side one will soon find himself virtually on the other side. If the President doesn't start to man up and stop trying to appease those who will never accept him then he wont be getting this vote in 2012. Time to take off gloves Mr. President or at least be willing to even swing.
Jones signed "the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."
Follow the link for context, if you don't mind giving crazy effing truthers another counter on their pageview list. Van Jones is #46 on the list. Other fun names include the founder of leftwing crazies Code Pink, and our own favorite Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Side note: Marbles, this sort of cuts against your assertion that 9/1 conspiracy theorist are mostly right wing...
I think the Obama White House is vetting people by using Madlibs.
Van Jones was right about one thing he mentioned in one of his speeches. Black kids aren't likely to have Columbine Moments.
The one major exception being the DC sniper shootings, and that kid was TRAINED to do that from the older guy.
EG
I just have to comment again, to Marbles' second paragraph and to Wave as well:
If Obama hadn't put a criminal tax evader at Treasury as his first of six high-level appointments who quit or bowed out because they lied to the IRS, if he hadn't hired a rabid anti-semite to chair the National Intelligence Council, if he hadn't awarded the Medal of Freedom to the woman who led the travesty of the Durban "anti-racism" UN conference... then maybe you'd have a point. But he did... and so you don't.
Obama doesn't need to man up and face down the crazy right wingers who will never love him... he needs to stop hiring liars, thieves, Jew-haters, and moonbat conspiracy theorists.
THAT would solve his problem. It's not that he's gutless, it's not that his opposition is ruthless and impossible to talk with... just look at the list! It's practically a Letterman-style Top Ten Bad Hiring Decisions. You can't unring the bell, but there's one ray of hope for Obama... he still hasn't hired over 60% of his senior staff.
Maybe he'll get the next few right.
@ Spool:
"..if he hadn't hired a rabid anti-semite to chair the National Intelligence..."
Wha? What's that about?
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I never said the 9/11 Truthers were all right wing. I said many to most of them were. Alex Jones, the "grandfather" of the movement, certainly is. At any rate, I remain unconvinced that they're 100% full of crap. 95% possibly. But not entirely. That's pretty much how I view all conspiracy theories. All of them have some element of truth. Ever heard of Operation Northwoods? It didn't happen, but it COULD have, had JFK been a different person (or in a really cranky mood that day.)
And Spool, Obama's bad hiring decisions have little to do with what I'm talking about. In a healthy political climate, those bad hires would be something we could all talk about constructively. In this environment, it's analogous to a bunch of bullies mercilessly tormenting some kid as he walks home from school, and then the kid suddenly trips, tumbles, and spills his books everywhere. Yeah, the bullies will laugh at that. But they were already bullying him ANYWAY. The kid being a clumsy ox is merely a happy convenience for them.
(Before you say anything, I tried to think of some aggressively ludicrous thing the kid could do to unsympathetically bring ridicule on himself, but I couldn't think of anything. So humor me and just pretend that tripping and falling is something that shows bad character and is universally frowned on in our society. :)
(This is why, in this hypothetical world, President Ford wasn't reelected.)
Chas Freeman. He blamed "the Israel lobby" for sinking his nomination.
--
I don't like your tripping analogy, but it's because falling down is an accident. Obama's disaster of a vetting process, and the wreckage it continues to produce, are no accident. These appointments represent failures, not mistakes.
--
A look at the political affiliations of the prominent figures who signed that 'statement' will have you scrabbling to find a right-winger in the bunch. Liberals aplenty though!
There's no way that Van Jones should have been forced out. It really doesn't matter what he said or did. Forcing him out under these conditions is a sign of weakness and will only encourage Republican attacks.
The person around whom all of this started, Beck has claimed that Obama is a racist with a deep seated hatred for white people. How he "knows" this is left unsaid. As far as I know he's never been invited to any family reunions.
Many Republicans (and conservatives) have talked greasy about Obama's children, his wife and his MOTHER. You have people bringing guns to town hall meetings. Not a week goes by without some conservative somewhere getting caught passing on a racist joke or email about Obama. Media talking heads and preachers have joked about or called for his death. Elected officials have generally refused to permanently and immediately distance themselves from crazies that say Obama is not an American citizen. We've heard that Obama wants an attack on the US or wants to set up death panels for old people. You have stupid people claiming that Obama wants to indoctrinate children in socialist ideology.
Generally there have been few or no resignations or firings over these things and apologies if forthcoming have been shockingly insincere.
So merely as pragmatic politics, Van Jones should not have resigned unless there was an equivalent pound of flesh extracted from a Republican hide somewhere. "You want Van? What are you willing to give up?"
It is weakness. Nothing that Van Jones said or did publicly (and probably privately) should have been unknown to the Administration. So I don't believe that the vetting process failed. What failed is Obama's nerve.
This Administration doesn't seem to get that (to take a line from LOTR) in the modern Republican party "there is evil there that does not sleep".
There is NOTHING that Obama can do short of resigning or dying that will satisfy his opponents. He needs to stop caving to them. It only encourages them and demoralizes his supporters.
I despise the modern Republican party but one thing that they do well is to fight. Obama needs to take a page from their playbook.
Charles Freeman is no anti-Semite. Pointing out that there is an Israel lobby does not an anti-Semite make.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123672847973688515.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Van Jones and his theories notwithstanding, I just think that this was yet a further indictment against the Obama administration for not having the cohones to spit back the same venom that was spewed at them. I mean this might have been spearheaded by Beck, but damn, all of these other fools started chiming in.
And if you are of the opinion that Obama shouldn't have had him hired in the first place via Valerie Jarrett, had this been Bush, I'm quite sure that Jones would have still had his job at LEAST until a formal inquiry had been started (think the various Sec of Defenses).
Again, given the timber of the country's past president, I ask exactly what are we striving for? Are we really looking for a middle-of-the-road individual to hold a position or do we want someone who's partisan--as was Jones. I personally think Jarrett did her job.
No, the parents don't need a visit from DCFS, but hopefully teachers will mark a big fat X in their attendance records for them not showing up today.
I don't have a TV right now. I'm just now hearing that he was giving a speech--I take it that it's about healthcare. Seeing as how he campaigned on a damn public option, I want him to deliver dammit. I'm 24 and without healthcare and I can't afford to get sick--FTW?!?!?!?!?
FIX IT!!!
To AB:
Not Valerie Jarett. Think of the shoes!!! That bus could really mess those up running over her.
I'd say Van Jones can get more things done in the private sector or behind the scenes...as for Glenn Beck & Co....LMAO!!!
Jones needed to go because of his weakass defense that he never read the 9-11 petition her signed. If you're a wacko, then own it. He should've stuck to his guns and said that he believed the CIA could exscute an elaborate cover-up which entailed the silenece of hundreds of people, even though it can't keep its own peoplesilent on torture.
@ Spool
Uhhhmm, come on buddy, you have 2 guys out of an entire Cabinet with "issues". Might I add that both guys were ratted out by forms of media (cable news idiots, bloggers) that weren't nearly as prevalent a decade ago.
We might have been really shocked to see Bush's (and Reagan's) folks face the scrutiny of the YouTube era.
That said, I sure hope Jarrett (who obviously won't be fired) has learned her lesson.
@ Shady Grady
Well, if there's any silver lining, it's that Beck is likely about the recieve his come uppance. Van Jones has plenty of free time on his hands now. I would suspect the Color Of Change movement will kick into another gear now.
But I agree with most of what you're saying about Jones' comments vis-a-vis the many GOP elected officials who are behind the "birthers" movement, insinutating that Obama wants to indoctrinate kids, and worse. I suppose the difference is, the left has no such mechanism to put the heat on these folks and force them to kick rocks. At least there isn't one I'm aware of.
Then again, Obama didn't exactly go to bat for Jones either, sooooo....
@ Uppity
Agreed. No way Obama (and Jarrett) didn't know about all this. But to make the guy jump ship without defending him, that's just silly.
@ Snob
Sounds like an A/B Conversation begging to happen to me.
@ CH555x
Yep, I hope Jones gets Beck and Co. in his crosshairs now. He's a private citizen. No need to hold back anymore.
I agree, Ch555x. Without question, Jones will recover from this episode. He was right to fall on the sword and move on. Plus, I can assure you that by close of business today, the anti-Obama forces have something or someone else to dissect and trip about. Trust!
Uhm, Valerie Jarrett doesn't need to go anywhere... especially behind this.
Average Bro,
I concur with you that Van Jones now has the opportunity to use his skills in activism now as a private citizen. Arianna Huffington felt that maybe that job wasn't really suited for him in the first place because it put him behind a desk most of the time.
Beck can go pound rocks now.
Do parents who still hold their kids out of school today deserve a visit from CPS?
Outrageous! Partisan politics exists on both sides of the aisle but this one really went over the top. Shameful.
I remember watching Reagan in school as a kid b/c as far as we knew, we lived in the United States of America and he was the President of the United States of America. Period. We had no concept of republicans or democrats. That was grown-up nonsense.
Hey Uppity... Humana is selling insurance for $80/month here in Texas. What are you spending your money on, man?
I applaud Paul for being the only other person besides me and AB to believe 9/11 truthers have no place in government.
I don't believe there's any equivalence between:
1) Believing the President isn't a citizen, and
2) Believing the President secretly orchestrated the murder of thousands of citizens by destroying the WTC.
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I love the irony of liberals suggesting that the reaction to some parents believing the State was trying to indoctrinate their kids should be... unaccountable State Enforcers coming to your house to scare you with threats of child neglect.
Yeah, that's the way to convince people you don't believe the State should be taking over their lives. Well done guys! And you wonder why people believe Death Panels are a possibility?
By the way, isn't this the site where folks said they'd believe anything of the government, because of the Tuskegee experiments?
@ Spool
I'm at school in Georgia and still have an address back in Chicago for the most part.
@spool - have you tried to get anything besides an aspirin with that Humana insurance down here in the Secession State? It's not ready for primetime, if you have it - keep your blood pressure down, they don't cover any Cardio work beyond a "It doesn't look good for you."
@ Spool:
I want to say this as a Jewish (okay, half-Jewish) American.
Here are four things that drive me crazy:
1. Anti-Jewish bigotry.
2. Rightwing and/or religiously motivated Jewish exceptionalism.
3. The iron grip that the VERY real "Israeli lobby" has on this country's testicles.
and last but definitely not least,
4. The fact that Jewish Americans critical of Israel's policies have to be careful who they talk to, because there ARE critics whose rhetoric is little more than thinly disguised anti-Semitism.
Having said that, I read Shady's link and I don't see ANYTHING in there that even remotely smacks of bigotry. Quite the opposite, in fact. If this is the best ammo in the "anti-Semite" calvary, than it's a poor, poor arsenal.
In short, I call bull.
"I don't like your tripping analogy, but it's because falling down is an accident. Obama's disaster of a vetting process, and the wreckage it continues to produce, are no accident. These appointments represent failures, not mistakes."
Did not ye see m'last paragraph, guv? The one with th' parentheses, what. I bid thee go back.
"I applaud Paul for being the only other person besides me and AB to believe 9/11 truthers have no place in government."
That's okay Spool---I fully admit I'm not fit for public service. XD
As for the signatures on that statement, sure, in that particular corner, it's a concentration of leftish types. T'aint the whole picture.
By the way, if anyone else is still hanging around, can anyone tell me just what Jones supposedly said that betrays him as hating white people? (Besides that INCREDIBLY stupid thing about school shootings, I mean.)
That's 9/11 Truth! They're the clearinghouse for the conspiracy movement... if that's not representative I dunno what is.
Marbles, please don't tell me you're a truther! You have better critical thinking skills than that.
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Totally offtopic: I see you use 'exepctionalizm' in the perjorative sense sometimes... is there any culture, nation, or society you'd consider better than some other one? Feel free to pick any two you like...
@ Spool:
Re the truther question:
Sorry---I was assuming you remembered our discussing this earlier.
I used to be a full-blooded truther. Guilty. Believe me, it was not something I arrived at easily. Despite one's fury at the policies of a current administration, one doesn't let THAT possibility enter his/her mind without (what appeared to be) convincing evidence sitting on top of years of transparent lying and abuses of power. Seeking counter-arguments was the main leg of my journey out of that forest---the other was simply further introspection. My thinking today is that, like most conspiracy theories, there are almost certainly elements of the truther narrative that are accurate or, at the very LEAST, merit genuine investigation. Have you ever actually looked at the claims? (ignoring the most obviously crazy stuff, that is.) Much of it is much more sober than the media portrays.
However, I never was able to buy the idea that a plot THAT enormous could be kept secret by so many people. The mistake that many conspiracy theorists (of all kinds) make is that they too gliby attribute everything to an omnipresent "they." "They" always control everything. I submit that there is no such thing as "they." "They" is nothing more than thousands of INDIVIDUALS. And we know how fragile and fallible individuals are. Even the closest thing to a "they" that ever existed, the Nazis, at the end of the day were individual people with names like Rolf, Otto and Wolfgang.
So citing a supervillainous, all-powerful "they" as the cause of everything is extremely naive. I don't think such a thing is possible on a scale like that.
But. I have yet to see the more sober, clear-eyed questions the Truthers pose answered. If they can be, then that's that. If they can't, then suspicions remain.
Somebody clearly knew something. That's as far as I'll go at this point.
______________
"is there any culture, nation, or society you'd consider better than some other one? Feel free to pick any two you like..."
If you want to go at it from that angle, then yes. Unashamedly, unabashedly, absolutely, un-politically correctly yes.
Rather than point fingers directly, I'll only say what I personally prioritize---
Any culture that places limited value on
INTROSPECTION
EMPATHY
HUMAN DIGNITY
in my book is an "inferior" culture. Because it directly fosters violence, anger, hatred and ignorance (and, in my admittedly uneducated opinion, mental illness). A critic of modern western society could make the case that our own society does that in different ways, but that's neither here nor there. You and I both know the kind of stuff I'm talking about.
Does this make me a cultural imperialist? An arrogant elitist with a superiority complex? Well, if deploring violence, predatory behavior, misogyny, fanaticism, and aimless destruction make me those things, so be it. There are few absolutes I can find in life, but I stand by those.
And now I will shaddap before AB shads me up. (Sorry, AB. I get carried away.)
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