During his campaign for the White House President Obama said, “We have seen Afghanistan worsen, deteriorate. We need more troops there. We need more resources there… I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan.”

He promised to send another ten to fifteen thousand troops to help those already there. He also declared that the war in Afghanistan was the proper front in the war against terror. Now that he is Commander-in-Chief, his vision seems to be less clear.

The military commanders gave the President four troop deployment options earlier this week but he refused all four. Not for military reasons but because of some hooey about the corruption of the government in Kabul and their inability to run a fair election. Mr. President, if our support for governments was based on whether they are corrupt or not and could run a fair election, we would have pulled federal funding from Chicago years ago. The problem with pulling out of Afghanistan, or Chicago for that matter, is that they would fall into violent anarchy. We have already seen that happen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Current thinking on what to do in Afghanistan is based on two faulty assumptions:

The first is that wars are clear and concise events with specific outcomes and easy to find exit points. When John McCain told us the truth about how long we might be in Iraq, we didn’t want to hear it. We have been in Japan and Germany for over sixty years and in the Philippines for much longer. I wonder if back during the Spanish- American War leftist were telling the President that the Philippines were tribal islands and would never be able to be organized into a stable democratic government?

The second faulty assumption is that if we walk away from Afghanistan, simply pull all of our troops out, the war it then over. How long would it be before the Taliban was running things again and Al Qaeda was using it as a base of operations?  We will be fighting the same people again in the future, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons from Iran or Pakistan. Our national attention span has shortened to Twitter-like dimensions while our enemies think in terms of centuries.

The real problem for President Obama is that is if he deploys more troops and commits to staying, Afghanistan is no longer Bush’s war but his. Not even a year into his term and he is already worried about his legacy rather than doing what is best for the country. He is worried that his presidency will get bogged down in the battle for liberty instead of being able to focus on strengthening ACORN and the SEIU.

The left doesn’t mind waging long, costly, and non-winnable wars, so long as they are they start them themselves. Look at the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Our cities are littered with the lives ruined by those wars. We have thrown enough money into those two rat holes to finance Iraq and Afghanistan for the next fifty years and toss in twenty years of free government health care to boot. Do we have an exit strategy from the Welfare State, Mr. President?

Credit where credit is due, and let’s face it. We Americans, right, left or center, take a churlish pride in a good slam dunk epithet. Not the hardcore racial third rail stuff, mind you. Just the playful sort. You know. Moonbat. Libtard. Tinfoil hat. In fact, tinfoil hat kind of backfired on Righties. Originally used to denigrate Lefties who adhered to psychotic conspiracy theories like 9/11 Truth, the term was embraced in full by the far Left as demonstrated by Markos Moulitsas’ Tinfoil Hat KOS conventions, smashing successes which attracted major left-leaning LibDem politicians over the past few years.

So Lefties revel in their psychoses. What else is new? Yet I seriously doubt teabagger is an epithet conservative Republicans will embrace. Who would? But then it occurred to me. Who’s doing the real oral servicing here? We Tea Partiers, who object tooth and nail to every major scam and power grab liberal Democrats and the President are trying to shove down our throats? Or liberal left-wing mouthpieces who can’t open wide and fast enough for Obama’s Chocolate Munchkin Donut Drop?

Let’s face it. When the White House emails you on the air to correct you, there’s some serious dunking going on there. Funny. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who foisted that term in full measure on the public consciousness in mid-April, spent two and a half hours in secret with the President and some other major Obama microphones a few days ago. From what little we hear, the President spent some time railing against FOX News and Glenn Beck, but lips have been sealed very tight around the rest of what went on there. Could it be it was “time to take the dough nuts”?

Personally, I wouldn’t want that getting out either. But I think there was some hardcore slam-dunking going on there, and I’m not talking LeBron James. Whatever is was, I’m sure it would all give Chris Matthews a tickle up his nose. Ironic how the President injected himself orally into this debate, given the circumstances:

“You Democrats, y’all be dunkin’ for yourselves. Those Republicans, they just dunk what they’re told!” Oh really? Like Republicans are just opening wide for Dede Scozzafava? Arlen Specter? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? LOL! Ya, as if. Last I checked, there was a full-fledged rebellion going on in the GOP regarding who dunks who. Conversely, the new mouthpieces over at the NEA can’t seem to service the President fast enough:

“We have received a call from a house that is vanilla to dunk some donuts that are chocolate. Let’s get those lips and brushes moving, people!”

Speaking of servicing, from EIF we have a list of “organically” inspired shows. Need more be said? So the next time some lefty libtard moonbat tinfoil hat Obama mouthpiece like Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper or even George Stephanopoulos talks about teabaggers,  just keep in mind whose lips are sealed and whose are always wide open, very receptive and ready to form an airtight seal.

When they do, please remind them not to talk with their mouths full. It’s very rude.

Speaking of sealed lips (not to mention wallets), I myself re-registered this week as an Independent after 29 years as a Republican. Never voted Democrat in my life. But I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me. I will not lean across the aisle in order to teabag Obama and the Left on the massive frauds of amnesty, climate change, the government takeover of health care, and all the other budget-busting and power-grabbing LibDem Lefty scams that will have us all teabagging the government in abject serfdom for the next thousand years.

I am a free man. I will not be a teabagging mouthpiece for anyone. Unlike some people

As soon as I turned 18, I moved in with him.  (Note: he was not my first target; I had a terrible crush on my American History teacher in high school – another gay man – but he was partnered and I scared him off.)  Needless to say, we did not live happily ever after.

Married life brought out my true immaturity.  He was set in his ways, I had no discipline.  He liked dinner parties and lectures, I liked wearing silver lame’ pants to discos.  He had plenty of friends, gay and straight, some of whom he’d known since I was an infant.  They were very nice to me – but I was jealous of them all.  I threw tantrums.  “You love them more than you love me!” 

Finally, he made me move back home.  It was the most humiliating day of my young life.

The relationship dragged on for a couple of years after that.  Then I started to take an interest in people my own age.  He went on to marry someone his own age.  He was not a pedophile; he was a vulnerable man I happened to zero in on (at the peak of my adolescent invincibility) at the right time.  Of course, looking back, he should have known better.  What did he think he was getting involved with?  It was a very foolish – and potentially self-destructive – choice for a grown-up to make.

Then again, when writer Christopher Isherwood fell for the youthful Don Bachardy, they ended up staying together for thirty years.  But that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.  I’m not saying pedophiles don’t exist – they certainly do (and most of them are straight).  But these things happen.  At least I didn’t meet “Teach” in a rest stop.

Which brings me to the fracas over Obama czar number five hundred and… well, who’s counting.  The conservative blogosphere has been in an uproar because Kevin Jennings – the (deep breath) Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, or “Safe School Czar” - failed, in 1988, while still a mere teacher, to advise a 15-year-old boy (according to some reports, he might have been older) to stop having sex with adult men (in particular one man the teenager had met in a public restroom).  Instead, Jennings reminded the boy to “play safe,” and use condoms.

To be honest, I don’t see what the big deal is.  Based on his own experience, Jennings probably figured it was no use trying to convince the boy to stop seeing the man – take it from me, that would have had the exact opposite effect – so the more practical tack was to urge the kid to at least protect himself, ASAP, as Jennings did.  Let’s not forget the high suicide rate among gay youth; twenty years ago, that teenager surely needed somebody to talk to.

Don’t get me wrong: I am no fan of NAMBLA, and I don’t care if the ancient Greeks thought it was a-okay to sleep with young boys.  If I had been that kid’s father, I probably would have grabbed the nearest shotgun and gone after the offending adult myself.  That’s a natural reaction - for a parent.  Not for a teacher.  A teacher has to walk a fine line between entering into his students’ world in order to gain their trust – something most parents fail at, miserably (and kids don’t want) - while at the same time watching them like a hawk (no pun intended).

My question is: where were this boy’s parents while he was picking up men in bus station lavatories?  If Jennings should have alerted anyone, it was the teen’s family.  But, of course, then ”Lolito” would have felt deeply betrayed by the “role model” he had confided in.  So it’s a lose-lose situation.

Of more concern to me is Jennings’ s CV (as posted on KevinJennings.com).  Talk about an over-achiever: Jennings graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, won a Klingenstein Fellowship at Columbia University, holds an MBA from NYU, founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), was the LGBT Finance Co-Chair for Obama for America – and to top it all off, he’s published five books!

Not bad for a guy from a North Carolina trailer park.  Clearly, Jennings is no slouch – he’s Super Gay!  So where’s the red flag?

Call me cynical, but I’ve noticed too often that homosexuals who find monetary and social success in activism – “career gays” - often start to manifest the same intolerance towards others that motivated them to fight homophobia in the first place.  In other words, they become so invested in battling bigotry that they begin to view almost anyone who isn’t gay as a potential enemy, losing sight of what (one hopes) was their original intent: to bridge gaps, promote understanding between disparate groups, and enhance Americans’ freedom to enjoy love relationships with whomever they want without suffering any unfair or negative repercussions.

You know, the same thing Dick Cheney wants.

Jonathan Crutchley

But, as evidenced in the outings, threats, and blacklisting of California’s Proposition 8 supporters last fall, there’s a tendency in the LGBT community to go overboard, and confuse “approval” with “diversity,” and ”equality” with “freedom.”  As one grown man I know rejoiced when openly gay McCain supporter Jonathan Crutchley was forced to resign as chairman of the gay pickup site Manhunt – because of his politics –  ”It’s democracy in action!”

No, it’s not – it’s McCarthyism, plain and simple (and ugly).  But in the gay ghetto, it’s easy to forget that your fellow countrymen exist – so get used to it!  (To their credit, gay groups in California have since toned down the rhetoric and seem to have realized that a new approach is needed re: gay marriage.)  Meanwhile, blind adoration 0f a President who adamantly opposes same-sex marriage and bows and cow-tows to the worst anti-gay despots on earth has also become a litmus test of one’s gayness.  But hey, he’s got a “D” after his name – so who am I to ask questions?

That said, Jennings’s now-famous anti-Christian rant, part of a speech he gave at (of all places) Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church, nine years ago – “We have to quit being afraid of the religious right… I’m trying not to say, ‘[F-] ‘em!’ which is what I want to say, because I don’t care what they think! [audience laughter]  Drop dead!” – well, it doesn’t surprise me.  It’s typical gay knee-jerk stuff.  Tired, and uninspired.

You can bet money Mr. Jennings would never dare make the same statement in a mosque.

Christians, like Mormons, continue to be easy punching bags – they don’t go in for strap-on explosives – and putting them down gives everyone a cheap and easy thrill.  But Christians and Mormons don’t have a dangerously homophobic, 57-state voting bloc in that international club of creeps called the UN that our fearless leader has been quivering to be a part of.

I wonder when Jennings and his ilk will realize that “Christianophobia” is, well, just so forever ago.

Much has also been made of the fact that Jennings contributed to a book of essays entitled Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Cultures, and (Homo)Sexualities).  Far more dangerous than a possible dialogue about homosexuality – in an era when any eight-year-old can turn on a re-run of Will and Grace - is the tricky, academic gobbledeegook that presumes to pass as English in the “product description” on Amazon:

Queer elementary classrooms are those where parents and educators care enough about their children to trust the human capacity for understanding and their educative abilities to foster insight into the human condition… Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others.  In short, queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out… explore taken-for-granted assumptions about diversity, identities, childhood, and prejudice.

Gee, whatever happened to milk and cookies?  Do politically-correct, post-modern nuggets of Romper Room moral relativism prevent childhood obesity?  The use of the word “queer” is certainly troublesome here.  Would black activists use the “N-word” in such classrooms?  Why does elementary education need to be “queered” anyway?  Grade school isn’t supposed to be some sort of experimental, off-Broadway art project.  Would the gay community please just call itself “gay” and be done with it already?

But I digress.

Which brings us to the infamous “Fistgate” scandal of 2000 (not Jennings’s best year).  At a conference called “Teach-Out,” sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education and Jennings’s GLSEN, students were invited to participate in “dialogues” (don’t you just love that word) about some usually unspoken (at least in polite society) aspects of homosexuality.  One workshop, “What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex & Sexuality in Health Class: A Workshop for Youth Only, Ages 14-21,” encouraged students to ask questions about gay sex.

Not gay history, or literature, or art.  Gay sex.

So when a curious female student asked what “fisting” was, Margot Abels, Coordinator of the HIV/AIDS Program for the Massachusetts Department of Education, replied that the practice, well-known in S&M clubs – and to anyone who saw the movie Cruising - was simply “an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with.”  Then, when a 16-year-old stated the unthinkable – that “fisting” didn’t sound too appealing – Abels quickly pointed out that it “often gets a really bad rap” and that it usually wasn’t about pain, “not that we’re putting that down.”  (Seinfeld, eat your heart out.)

Maybe it’s just me, but whatever happened to love?

Most young people realize they’re gay because of crushes, romantic feelings that crop up for another person of the same sex - not because of kinky fetishes.  (Those come later.)  Kids aren’t born little Roman Polanskis.  Why not focus on the similarities we all share rather than the differences?  Wouldn’t that be the best defense for gay marriage (now passed by legislative vote, as opposed to judicial decree, in at least three states)?

Harry Hay

But back to the Safe School Czar.  Much has also been made of his glowing praise for gay rights pioneer Harry Hay.  The right-wing blogosphere has its panties in a wad because Hay was a supporter of NAMBLA.  Hay was also a Communist – as a gay man, he really should have known better – and a militant hippie who founded the “Radical Faerie” movement, a group that rejected Western sex roles in favor of pseudo-Native American spirituality and paganism, with a little cross-dressing thrown in (that would have gone over real well in Mao’s China, Soviet Russia, or Cuba).

The gay couple on Desperate Housewives these guys ain’t.  No sports jerseys, football games, or suburban barbecues for them – that would be just too bourgeois.

To be blunt, the Radical Faeries were a bunch of back-to-nature, communal, moonbat kooks for whom everyday was Halloween.  So it’s not surprising that Harry Hay lent his name to NAMBLA – anything to challenge the status quo, and mock traditional sex roles (even for gay men!).  None of that who’s-the-husband /who’s-the-wife / let’s adopt a baby stuff for him.  He would have supported the San Francisco Transgendered (and Questioning) Higher Primates-Gerbil Brotherhood (SFTQHPGB) if there’d been one.

But Hay also founded the first American gay rights organization – in 1950 – way ahead of his time.  That took cojones.  Hence, he remains a hero to today’s LGBT community, a figure gays and lesbians are tacitly expected to admire.  The fact is most of us had no clue he had anything to do with NAMBLA – until now.

I had the pleasure of meeting Hay once at a party.  Getting on in years, he was polite, soft-spoken, and rather sweet – a harmless old man who had stirred up enough trouble in his day.  That said, I think Kevin Jennings would be wise to clarify which of Hay’s accomplishments he admires, and to denounce NAMBLA outright.  After all, Jennings may be a radical flack, but a Radical Faerie he definitely is not.  (In fact, he wouldn’t look so out of place on Wysteria Lane.)  Radical Faeries don’t bother working the system. 

After everything he’s accomplished in his 46 years – all the power and prestige - Kevin Jennings should be done rebelling against his Southern Baptist upbringing.  Yet I fear that he, like legions of emotionally-stunted Bush bashers, may be just another gay man who can’t let go of his anger at mommy and daddy – and God - yet can’t stop stubbornly yearning for their absolute approval.

Newsflash: 100% of the world is never going to love you.  Isn’t it enough that some people do – and that the entire mainstream media’s got your back?  Sooner or later, you have to fess up to the fact that Utopian notions of ”equality” don’t mesh with actual human capability.  Nor do they bring happiness.  Rather, it’s our differences that make us interesting - and our ability to accept them that make us strong. 

In four fast decades, gay and lesbian Americans have gone from being shadow people afraid to speak out to the absolute monarchs of the popular culture.  If you don’t believe me, just look at Rachel Maddow.  (And we wonder why the rest of the world still hates us.)  What worked for the gay vanguard of the 1970s doesn’t work anymore, not in colorful, mixed-up, religious/progressive America - where most companies now offer same-sex benefits and law enforcement workers must undergo extensive, mandatory sensitivity training. 

Did we learn nothing from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? 

It’s high time that gays changed their strategy and started thinking of themselves not as some kind of LGBT Special Victims Unit, but first and foremost as Americans.  We’ve been given so much, the ball’s in our court to reach across the proverbial aisle (as The One is so fond of saying), and not just demand our worth – but prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It’s called give and take (as opposed to just take).

Yes, there are still old-time anti-sodomy laws on the books in many states - making America, in theory, the bigoted backwater of intolerance that the grievance-mongers (D) love (because it keeps them in power).  But in day-to-day reality, gay life in the USA is full of possibility, and palpable hope.

With our failing dollar, our PC-handicapped President – and a globe full of ruthless, homophobic, homicidal totalitarian enemies - now more than ever, we who live in this massive melting pot of honest-to-God diversity need to stick together.  As the Democrats like to say, do it “for the children” – so that future generations of Lolitas and Lolitos can live, freely, without having to look for love in bus station toilets.

Oh, one last thing: why do we need a “Safe School Czar” again?

Moments after I heard the news I did a radio interview and predicted that the news media would destroy her in their transparent quest to pave the way for Barack Obama’s historic election. I had no idea just how right that “blink” calculation would be and I certainly never would have guessed that I would become a small part of that story by dedicating my life and fortune to documenting just how unbelievably bad it would get.

The last twelve months of Sarah Palin’s life truly bring new meaning to the phrase “what a difference a year makes.” I strongly believe that no public figure in modern America has ever endured more stress, pressure and unfair scrutiny in a more dignified fashion than she has over the past year (though what George W. Bush tolerated over the last three years of his presidency probably comes in a close second).

On August 28th of last year Sarah Palin was a largely unknown governor considered to be a rising star largely because of her willingness to take on Republicans in a way that had endeared her to Democrats. Today she is an ex-governor wrongly perceived by most of the country and virtually all of the news media as an erratic, unqualified, lightweight and ultra-partisan Republican who can’t even mange her own family. 

What did she do exactly to deserve this unfortunate perception? I have literally gone around the country (screening my film “Media Malpractice” which features an exclusive interview with then Governor Palin) and asked numerous media outlets that question and I have yet to get a remotely sensible answer.

The best I can come up with (oddly, this is hardly ever mentioned when the topic comes up) is that, after having to deal with three or four sittings with a Katie Couric who was clearly out to get her, she did not name a supreme court case with which she disagrees other than Roe v. Wade. Other than that, my documentary proves that every other alleged transgression that she committed has been either blown out of proportion or simply made up by a news media that obviously had both a political and financial agenda against her. When you consider all of the whopper-sized blunders committed by her campaign counterpart Joe Biden, the unfair treatment of Palin does become, at least based on the live audience reactions to my film, rather hilarious.

On top of this, I wish you to consider the unique circumstances Palin was dealing with while she went through the last year, circumstances that a remotely fair media would have considered a remarkably successful and nearly error-free year.

If, in just one spin around the sun, you had given birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome (that even mainstream media outlets would not fully accept as really belonging to you even though there was no other biological possibility), had your unmarried teenage daughter’s pregnancy (and later, her sex life) become fodder for massive worldwide coverage, had your first child sent to Iraq, had your fourteen-year-old, non-public figure daughter become the subject of rape jokes on national television, had your reputation and character destroyed by lies intended to foster the election of a man you knew would forever change/destroy the country you love, were prevented from doing your day job by a group of loser bloggers who lay awake at night (probably under the roof of their parents’ homes) dreaming of being interviewed by Keith Olbermann, and were thrown under the bus by numerous people on your “side” because they decided it was in their self-interest to do so — what are the chances you would not be left in the fetal position in a pool of your own drool?

But instead of cracking under this unprecedented pressure, Sarah Palin has proven her courage (and perhaps wisdom) by simply pivoting. While I disagreed with the timing of her decision to resign as Governor (mostly because I knew it would be misperceived as “quitting” by those who didn’t understand the facts on the ground in Alaska), I know it was done out of intentions that in a just world would be rewarded and not condemned. So far, it has also proven to be remarkably effective. After all, what other housewife from Wasilla, Alaska could have possibly altered the course of the health care debate (and possibly the entire Obama presidency) by simply posting some strong and well-footnoted opinions on her Facebook page?!

So, what have we learned from Sarah Palin’s remarkable year? Hopefully, we have learned a lot.

Among other things, we should have learned…

That surprise announcements can often create more long-term perception problems than they are worth (at least when they come from Republicans).

That to the media if you are a young, good looking, charismatic,  non-white male without a long resume and  are a conservative running for Vice-President, you are an embarrassment to the country. But if you are a young, good-looking, charismatic, non-white male without a long resume and are a socialist running for President, you are the Second Coming.

That the candidate who told the truth the most during the 2008 campaign was Sarah Palin.

That the media is perfectly willing and able to destroy someone’s character simply because it suits their political and economic agenda and will stop at nothing to do so.

That there are far too many high-profile “conservatives” willing to sell out their “cause” to gain favor with the news media and that there is almost no accountability for their treason.

That the left understands that this is a war where “assassinating” leaders of the other side is perfectly acceptable, while the right seems to still think that this is a picnic and that the Sarah Palins of the world grow on trees.

That the only people more threatened by a highly successful and good looking mom than liberal women, are Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Letterman and Bill Maher.

That the power of being a celebrity is far greater than the power of being Governor of Alaska.

That the ex-boyfriend of the daughter of the ex-Governor of Alaska can get treated as a media star if it is perceived to hurt a prominent conservative.

That more character was revealed in Sarah Palin over the past twelve months than America probably deserves in a politician.

That August 29th, 2008 was a seminal moment in our politics and media which has changed, perhaps forever, the rules of engagement in a way that may make it impossible for conservatives to ever fully recover and should truly frighten all fair-minded Americans.

If we don’t heed these lessons, then we will deserve what we will inevitably get.

I am not a Birther. Which is not to say that I think the question of Barack Obama’s US citizenship has in anyway been adequately answered, it has scarcely even been addressed other than through sneers and accusations of racism (and yes, a Certificate of Live Birth and several conflicting CNN statements…).  Rather, I just don’t believe it in anyway likely that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in the country when two Hawaiian newspapers reported at the time that he was.

That said, I find the way that people who do believe that is a possibility are being treated by everyone – from the White House, to the media, to many even in the conservative blogosphere – to be completely unfair. Birthers are treated as kooks and extremists, banned from the comment sections of websites, and given less respect or voice in the media than those detached enough from basic reality to believe that passenger planes didn’t hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 despite, you know, the video of it happening and the missing passenger jets full of people. It begs the question – Is uncertainty about the citizenship of the President of the United States really so offensive? Certainly no one expressed this kind of outrage when John McCain’s eligibility was questioned due to his birth in the Panama Canal Zone. And I say rightly so. Here is why:

The list of qualifications for the presidency as spelled out by our founding fathers is remarkably short. As it turns out, almost anyone can be president, as long as they meet three, and only three, basic criteria. One, that they are a natural born citizen of the United States. Two, that they are at least 35 years old. And three, that they have maintained US residency for at least the last fourteen years. Citizenship, Age, and Residency, and that’s pretty much it. You don’t have to have any particular philosophy (which is good for Mr. Obama, considering he rejects the founding principles of the nation he now leads as “fundamentally flawed”), you don’t have to have any particular experience (which also serves Mr. Obama since his meteoric rise to fame seems to have skipped from local political agitator directly to elected government official without ever landing even for a moment on real-world employment), you don’t even have to like America itself, or Americans (those bitter folk who cling to their guns and their religion, or ‘stupidly’ behaved police officers for example). Amazing really. Our founders enumerated almost no restraints whatsoever on who might serve as president, and yet two of the three requirements they did write into the document that is America, citizenship and residency, make clear that they were very concerned that the president be, well, American. That tells me that a president’s citizenship is an important issue indeed.

Of course, the reason our founders cared about this issue so much is obvious. Citizenship is about identity. It’s about who a person is, and what values govern them. It is about loyalty to one nation over all others, which in the case of this new America wasn’t just about geographic-jingoism at all. To them, America was less a place than an it was an idea – An idea that men should be free from the tyranny and that that government serves best which serves least. Since the founders were trying to grow their new country out of a continent of colonies there-to-fore governed by an entirely different nation, and peopled by settlers from diverse nations around the world, the opportunity for competing interests and loyalties was pretty high. They didn’t want to give the keys to just anyone. No, the President of the United States was to be a citizen of this country, holding up this country’s values and ideals, and loyal to this country alone. The president was not to be a British Citizen, or a French Citizen, or a Global Citizen, but an American Citizen.

And that is what the Birther Movement is really all about. It’s about who we are as a people, and whether or not Barack Obama is one of us. And I am not using the term “us” here as some thoughtless code-word for race as undoubtedly those too infantile in their thinking to even have a discussion about race without shrieking accusation and ad hominem in the first place will bemoan, but to talk about Americans – those people of all ethnicities and backgrounds who are defined, not by the color of our skin, but by our common values and loyalty to the idea that is America. What the Birthers see in Barack Obama is a man whose values and loyalties seem to starkly contrast with those that have so long defined us as Americans, a man dedicated to ideas that are foreign to our own.

We see America as a melting-pot, where a singular culture is born out of many. E Pluribus Unum, we say. Barack Obama sees America as a multi-cultural balancing act where each person’s first loyalty is to those most like themselves in class or race or gender, and where those diverse groups can only co-exist with the guidance of government.

We see America, from the Pilgrims who signed the Mayflower Compact to the Biblical scholars (yes, even Jefferson and Franklin) who birthed the nation, to the spirit of sacrifice and charity that thrives to this very day, not as a nation of Christians (for that freedom is at the deepest core of our common philosophy) but as a Christian nation. A nation conceived in and dedicated to those Biblical principals (as directly expressed by our founders and philosophical forbearers all the way back to John Locke) of liberty, self-government, an independent judiciary, forgiveness of debt, mercy, and honor of history . Barack Obama says, “We are not a Christian nation, at least not anymore…,” and subscribes to a personal religious theology rooted not in grace and love and freedom, but in anger and conquest.

We see America, from our victory over British oppression, to the liberation of Europe from the national socialists and defense of her against the communists, to the defeat of the Taliban and toppling of Saddam Hussein, as a force for good in the world. Barack Obama travels the world apologizing for the very actions we have always called our national pride, always quick to point out what he sees as America’s meddling, but never mentioning the communist elements, oppressive regimes, or extremist agitators that typically drew our sons and daughters into those regions in the first place.

We view our progress, our innovation, our freedom as unparalleled on the stage of history because the system of government we have created empowers men to their own highest achievement rather that seeking to regulate them into conformity with the plans of others. Barack Obama speaks of world orders, more intrusive government, and sees America as merely one color in a vibrant tapestry of nations, no better than any other, and perhaps worse for our arrogance and greed. Instead of celebrating us, he decries us as in need of reform in the image of European governments that aren’t ashamed to call themselves socialist.

We see America as not without fault, but unparalleled in our goodness in all of human history. He sees America as flawed, though perhaps not beyond his own repair.

For all of these reasons and many, many more, Barack Obama seems to be, if not un-American, then at least not-American. Which brings us back to citizenship. The question the Birthers are really trying to ask isn’t ‘is Barack Obama one of us.’ He plainly is not one of us. The real question is ‘why not?’ The Birthers think the answer might be as simple as that he is not an actual citizen of this country. They think he must have been born somewhere else, like Kenya, to have the views and values he expresses. Others think that Mr. Obama was born here, but that perhaps his parents renounced his citizenship while he was living in Indonesia as a child, maybe to get him into certain schools or just because they thought at the time that they would live in Indonesia forever. Maybe that would explain how Mr. Obama paid from his Harvard education, through programs aimed at helping foreign nationals get American educations. Which might explain why none of his collegiate records or papers have ever been released. Which might further explain why there is just so much about his past that has been deliberately withheld from the public, or colorfully rewritten in his artificially sweetened autobiographies. I don’t happen to agree with the Birthers or their legal-citizenship cousins, but my question for the Birthers-haters is – When did it become incumbent on citizens asking reasonable questions about their president’s life, experiences, and even his eligibility to be president, to simply accept the that president at his word? Is it not reasonable to expect an elected official, especially one who has promised unprecedented transparency, to simply reveal the documents relevant to answering the biggest questions about his life? Are we supposed to take all of our government officials at face value now, or just this one? Why does the media, whose job it is to hold the government accountable deride the Birthers and not demand the president simply remove the cloak he has so effectively hidden himself behind? Agree with them or not, the Birthers are just trying to answer the perfectly legitimate questions created by the patent dishonesty about and obscuration of most every aspect of Barack Obama’s life. Who can blame them?

As for those of us who don’t subscribe to the conclusion of the Birthers, the truth is that even worse questions remain for us. After all, if the answer isn’t that Mr. Obama is not a legal American citizen, then the question that remains is how is it that a young man who was born here, was raised here, is from among us could be so foreign in his views of who we are as a people? What weakness in our system has allowed to fester on our own streets beliefs, loyalties, and sensibilities so antithetical to the ones that have so long defined, propelled, and strengthened us? And perhaps even more troubling – If the President of the United States really has nothing at all to hide in the past he has so sought to conceal, then why has he concealed it at all? Is it simply distrust of his fellow citizens, or dislike? Does he think himself so far above the rabble that he is simply beyond having to expose himself to our judgments? Or is it that Barack Obama simply wants to be left alone to define his own life, to continue writing his own narrative unencumbered by fact or evidence or inquiry, leaving history to believe about him whatever he himself conceives or constructs? Is he a leader whose legacy is his own declaration? If so, he may be even less American than the Birthers themselves fear.

Yet I was willing to give him some credit for working with former President Bush on a cause they both believed in – AIDS and poverty in Africa – even though he disagreed with Bush’s stance on Iraq. I honestly don’t think throwing all the money in the world at Africa will change anything there unless the tin pot dictators on that continent are all tossed out on their hineys – and I believe fellow rock star philanthropist Bob Geldof said something similar - but that’s beside the point. I might think even more of Bono if he were to give all of his own massive fortune to the needy in Africa before he lectures the rest of us about our “responsibility,” but I doubt even his philanthropic tendencies go that far. If he did, how could he afford to do things that only rich folks can do, like have his favorite hat flown from the UK to Italy because he forgot it? 

But cool rock stars have their limits. Apparently the B Man reached his when Bush tried to give him a hug at a prayer breakfast a couple of years ago. Adroitly dodging the president by scooting behind the podium, he shook his hand instead. Apparently Bush was good for soaking for taxpayer money for Bono’s cause, but that didn’t merit a hug.

Surprisingly, the media failed to pick up on that little maneuver until this week, when Bono admitted to the dodge in a BBC interview. Why mention it now? Apparently he felt bad about it, but since no one noticed it, why point it out publicly and humiliate someone who is no longer in the public eye? He could have just written Bush a private note saying “sorry, dude.” But I’m a little more cynical – I’m thinking he knew about the buzz of publicity that would accompany his little admission. See, with Bush out of office and criticizing Obama being verboten in the media, even new evidence of old Bush-bashing would immediately be picked up on and go viral. When a world tour is looming, any publicity will work in a pinch.

But someone did notice Bono hiding behind the podium that day – then-Sen. Barack Obama, who reportedly said to Bono afterward, “Nice work with the hug dodge.” This is a man who knows all about the sneaky insult. Remember the middle-finger nose scratch? Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain were recipients of that bit. How about his “lipstick on a pig” zinger, which many thought was aimed at Sarah Palin? More class than you can serve with Wagyu steak.

One of the commenters on the Yahoo post linked above makes a good point (emphasis mine):

It’s really convenient that the news media has found an excuse for everything we see that might put Pres Barry in a bad light. They never came close to trying to make Bush look good. Even now, this story coming out makes it look like the two “cool” kids in school had an inside joke behind the reject’s back. The only reason Bush was a reject, the only reason anyone is a reject in the public eye is based on media stance. If they love you, you’re a rock star. If they don’t, you’re Adolf Hitler.

Yep. Bono and Obama – part of the clique of their own creation. Only not everyone is as impressed with them as they are with themselves.

Here’s a hint: not all the money in the world can buy you class.

I have no proof, but it appears if there is a new sponsor for Letterman’s daily Ruth Madoff joke. For the past several weeks he’s been doing the same exact joke about Bernie Madoff’s wife claiming her $92 million wasn’t from swindling, that it was money she saved by switching to Geico®. His repetition makes me think the insurance giant’s paying Worldwide Pants to do the joke every night. This week, he added a joke every night about Ruth’s favorite item at California Pizza Kitchen® that suggested they were a new sponsor. On successive nights it was chicken ponzi, chicken al-fraudo, and veal scaloponzi.

Eight months after the election, Sarah Palin and John McCain are still in the monologues. O’Brien told another John McCain Twitter joke this week, claiming that McCain tweeted “The Nurse is stealing all my stuff.” Fallon claimed that Sonya Sotomayor looked frail and her hair was thinning: It is part of her plan to run for President in 2012, as John McCain. Maher mocked Republicans for calling Obama’s health-care bill convoluted, while still being able to make sense out of a Sarah Palin Speech; and said the despite Time Magazine calling her a renegade, “the only thing Sarah Palin ever rebelled against (besides grammar, wildlife, and sports analogies) was family planning.”

Colbert did an interesting line that left his audience puzzled. In an attempt to get Keith Olbermann to name him as the “Worst Person,” he pretended to slap a baby with a puppy. Then he said, “If that didn’t work, here is something I KNOW will light your fuse: George Bush followed through on his promise to fight AIDS in Africa with billions of dollars of funding!”

Obama’s pathetic baseball pitch was quite a popular topic. Letterman claimed his arm got so sore that he had to call Rush Limbaugh for some Oxycontin. Stewart claimed the Fox play-by-play announcers called it in the dirt when it wasn’t. (It would it been, were it not for a great save by Albert Pujols.) Only Maher went as far to correctly identify the pitch as being thrown “like a girl.” But the…

Funniest Obama Line of the Week  goes to Jimmy Kimmel who claimed that the jeans President Obama wore at the All Star Game were weird–that they made him look like his Aunt Linda. The following night he did a video piece about those jeans, which was the only bit of the week that actually used Obama as the foil.

Letterman claimed that you know the economy is bad when the President has to take a second gig (pitching at the All-Star Game) However…

Lamest Attempt at a Obama Joke goes to Conan O’Brien for this ultra-lame video piece. His writers actually made a montage of foolish things President Obama has done that would have been comic fodder during any Republican Presidency, but instead made fun of mean Republicans for making fun of Obama’s simple human tendencies.

Another interesting flip on reality came from Letterman: “A teleprompter is just a machine that tells the President what to say. In Bush’s case the machine was called Dick Cheney.” (Why is it okay for Obama to be a puppet?)

The shattered teleprompter was a popular topic. Jimmy Fallon said, “It’s so bad, even speeches about the economy are crashing.” Fallon really has some funny lines, but his monologues are still falling flat, even after four months on the air. It seems his delivery talents are just not up to speed with his writers. He also has no qualms with Obama material: “Obama was there for the All-Star Game so he could give a ten run bailout to whoever was losing.”

Most Over-used Person as a Punchline was Amy Winehouse who’s getting a divorce. Letterman said it was for the sake of the children’s Robitussin. Conan said she was shocked, that she had no idea she was even married. Ferguson claims they’re fighting over custody of the crack pipe, and Fallon said it was inevitable after a long while of sleeping in separate gutters.

The fortieth anniversary of the Moon landing was also a popular topic. Conan claimed it was man’s greatest accomplishment, unless you’re counting putting cheese inside of a pizza crust. Letterman bemoaned the fact that they can put a man on the Moon, but they still can’t put a man on Sonya Sotomayor.

Writers over Shoulders Award goes to Conan O’ Brien and Jimmy Kimmel for their takes on the tape of the Moon landing being erased. Conan claimed it was done for reruns of Alf, Kimmel claimed it was for reruns of Growing Pains.

Most Interesting Interview was Astronaut Mike Massimino on Craig Ferguson. Not only was he personable, he gave a wonderfully vivid description of what it’s like walking to the shuttle on the morning of a launch day. He is also the first Astronaut I remember, actually admitting that they wear diapers during a launch.

Oldest Presidential Joke: Stephen Colbert again went all the way back to the Nixon Era: “Nixon Supreme Court nominees Clement F Haynsworth jr. and G Harrold Carswell were rejected on suspicions of racism. The evidence? They were nominated by Richard Nixon.”

The confirmation hearings of Sonya Sotomayor were a far more popular topic on the Late Night Shows than they were in the ratings. O’Brien, Colbert, and Kimmel all found it amusing that the questioning turned to Nunchucks. Letterman claimed that on day two, she sang “I Dreamed a Dream.” O’Brien claimed she demonstrated her lack of bias against white people by showing up with a Coldplay CD and a yoga mat. He also said she’s a Yankees fan, “That’s great. They can use a strong leftie off the bench.”

Angriest White Man was a given now that Bill Maher is back at work. But this week he shares it with Jon Stewart. Both hosts are blaming racism for Republican opposition to Sotomayor. Maher said they’re accusing her of reverse racism, which means she is giving the real racists a bad name. Stewart said Republican Senators like the racist part about her, they just hate her race.

Then to illustrate their liberal open-mindedness, both launched into racist routines: Maher claimed the old white Senators were frustrated with her like the cleaning woman who had been stealing from the club. “Too much agua, you’re killing the orchids.” Stewart ran a clip of Sotomayor introducing her family members in attendance while he chanted off screen, “Please don’t say you all came in the same hatchback! Please don’t say you all came in the same hatchback! … Hey, since Carlos Mencia isn’t on anymore, someone has to do it!”

Hey, if you weren’t a Democrat, you probably couldn’t do it. I’m thinking of switching my party affiliation, so I can be an Emmy-nominated racist comic too!

“A revolution principle certainly is, and certainly should be taught as a principle of the Constitution of the United States, and of every State in the Union.” — James Wilson, Scottish lawyer, signer of the Declaration of Independence, a major force in the drafting of the Constitution, a leading legal theoretician and one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Each time July 4th rolls around, whoever lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue makes speeches celebrating American freedom and some other stuff like baseball and apple pie. But the guy at that address never gets down to lauding what the 4th of July is really all about: It’s a celebration of violence to achieve what most would agree was a just political end.

Yes, that political end was the achievement of independence from what America’s mostly British-born founders considered English tyranny by its German king and Parliament. But let’s have an honesty moment: I seriously doubt many today would consider the British rule that so angered our Founding Fathers anything to fight about. I mean, didn’t Screen Actors Guild members recently vote some fellow thespians onto the SAG Board of Directors who believe in taxation without representation?

That was a platform plank Marcia Wallace, Bob Newhart’s TV-shrink office receptionist, pitched to me on the Director’s Guild steps when she was running for a SAG Hollywood board slot. Her idea and that of some others who got elected last go ’round is to bar actors who don’t make a certain amount of money from voting in SAG elections and on union issues while, at the same time, forcing them to pay dues and be SAG members if they want to work. Is there any real difference between that scheme and the plight of the colonists who had to pay taxes levied in London even though they had no representation in Parliament? Maybe Wallace and those who voted for her should share some time on Bob’s cognitive dissonance couch with Mr. Carlin.

Talk about violence.

Anyway, when violence is used for the reason George Washington and Baron von Gekko used it, violence, for lack of a better word, is good. Violence is right, violence works. Violence clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

But the man in the White House right now doesn’t believe in violence for just cause. He gave the order for the Navy SEALS to shoot the Somali pirates to save the American ship captain they were holding hostage, you say? No. My military sources say he equivocated and the SEALS took the initiative themselves just as they are trained to do. He boldly sent the USS John McCain to intercept that North Korean ship believed to be carrying ballistic missiles for Iran? No, my military sources say top Pentagon brass leaned on him behind closed doors until he acted. Against that record, his deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan appears to be an aberration.

I believe the real view of the man currently living in our presidential mansion was stated quite clearly last month while positioned in his classic Mussoliniesque uplifted chin, quarter shot pose: “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.” The Borg could not have said it better. But why stop there? Our president then compounded the intellectual insult: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.”

Those ideals embodied as rights in the American Constitution include equality before the law, rights of due process against the power of the state and the right to be left alone by the minions of government. But the paramount right is at all times the right to use violence against a government that violates those and other fundamental portions of its contract with the people — aka: the Constitution — when all lawful and peaceable remedies have failed. To say “it was not violence that won full and equal rights” may be literally true in the sense they were not won at the point of a gun, but the statement perpetuates a highly misleading myth about passive resistance in general.

The non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are shibboleths among the urban elite and academic classes for the only moral way to challenge oppression and injustice. Fortunately, George Orwell understood the brutal reality of that game even if his fellow intellectuals didn’t: “Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

Gandhi’s and King’s non-violence only worked because they were not facing a Stalin or a Saddam or a Hitler or a Mao or a … Peaceful protest against those and like regimes is a guarantee of becoming worm food. Fact is, Gandhi and King protested the unjustness they saw within a fundamentally just system constructed by those aforementioned dead guys from Britain, and they didn’t just pull those principles out of their rear ends.

Those principles we take for granted that permit a balance between the sovereignty of the individual and that of the state we take are the accrued wisdom of centuries within an Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Viking alloy of cultures that valued personal freedom and its legitimate limits within the group that protected that freedom. Ya know, “The strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack,” as Rudyard Kipling put it. There are other ways of being akin to the beehive, but if individuals want to remain individuals, the occasional sting of violence or its threat is the only thing that prevents it.

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In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Obama’s Health Care Plan, Obama’s Doctor, John McCain, Cap and Trade, Global Warming, Fox News, CNN, Time Magazine, Joy Behar, and David Archuleta.