Pointing out inaccuracies with inaccuracies since 2000
When someone refers to soccer as “metric football,” despite the fact that the standard measure in soccer is the yard, then you have to figure there will be some gaps in said person’s ability to reason.
That’s why it’s no surprise that James Taranto was giddy when he thought he perceived a subtle Obama gaffe. In actuality the “writer” had simply stopped thinking once the predetermined link had been made:
There weren’t a lot of surprises in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech last night, but here’s one: The president quietly repudiated the myth that Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda.
He went on to quote Obama’s speech:
Since 9/11, al Qaeda’s safe havens have been the source of attacks against London and Amman and Bali.
The attack in Amman having later been claimed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq — Jimmy T saw his gotcha moment and whipped up every last ounce of his rhetorical skill to piece together this argument:
Little wonder Obama also said in his speech that “the wrenching debate over the Iraq war is well-known and need not be repeated here.” That’s easier than admitting that he has changed his mind and now regards Iraq as having been an al Qaeda safe haven and source of international terrorism.
What seems to be a colossal lapse in memory for someone who is paid to follow the news is that Obama never asserted that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq. In fact, during the Democratic nomination battle he was caught in a war of words with McCain over this very topic, asserting:
Well first of all, I do know that al Qaeda is in Iraq. That’s why I’ve said we should continue to strike al Qaeda targets. But I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.
The attacks in Amman happened in 2005, as Jimmy T states in his post. My dear James that’s 2 years after Bush invaded Iraq. Little wonder that Jimmy T pokes holes in other’s opposition to the Iraq War. That’s easier than admitting that you were duped by man who chokes on pretzels.
It seems that the banking laws in offshore tax havens are a little too strict for some in the U.S. Apparently you have to give your name. But that can all be taken care of with a simply romp to . . . .Wyoming? That’s right. In Wyoming you can start a shell business anonymously and start a bank account for that business, also anonymously. From the Economist article:
For shady clients, this is a far better proposition: what their bankers do not know, they can never be forced to reveal.
Ah yes. Well if there’s a market for such things someone should make money off of it right? The free market at work.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than in America. Take Nevada, for example. Its official website touts its “limited reporting and disclosure requirements” and a speedy one-hour incorporation service. Nevada does not ask for the names of company shareholders, nor does it routinely share the little information it has with the federal government.
There is demand for this ask-no-questions approach. The state, with a population of only 2.6m, incorporates about 80,000 new firms a year and now has more than 400,000, roughly one for every six people. A study by the Internal Revenue Service found that 50-90% of those registering companies were already in breach of federal tax laws elsewhere.
So all this time our shady citizens were taking their money to Switzerland, while the Swiss’ shady citizens were coming back to America.
A money-laundering threat assessment in 2005 by the federal government found that corporate anonymity offered by Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming rivalled that of familiar offshore financial centres. For foreigners, America is a particularly attractive place to stash cash, because it does not tax the interest income they earn. Thus with both anonymity and no taxation, America offers them all the elements of a tax haven.
On the campaign trail, Obama several times cited a single building in the Cayman Islands called Ugland House which notionally houses 12,000 corporations. He said: “That’s either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.”
What about the 400,000 corporations in Nevada? The 1-in-6 ratio? That’s either the most CEO infested state in the Union or its the biggest tax scam in history.
Despite his past mistakes, I was ready to give Bill Kristol a clean slate. Let him forget about the immense blunder that was the Iraq War and focus on his poignant critique of Obama Administration. My thinking being that perhaps he’s not that good at coming up with policies, but he is good at finding fault in other people’s policy (a common malidy of the right-wing press that is often helpful when the left gains control but a complete disaster when the right is in power).
But of course that was all shot to hell, because Bill Krisstol has a script and God help him he is sticking to it! Exhibit A:
Kristol, as always, starts with a back-handed compliment to the opposition. Referring White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel’s desire not to let a crisis go to waste, Kristol writes:
Emanuel deserves points for candor. But perhaps not for perspicacity.
Candor is something Kristol was never that good at. His way is better charecterized as muddle and fling poop, with a straight enough face that half the country thinks he’s a lunatic and the other half takes him at his word. The following is his take on who REALLY wanted to invade Iraq - I’ll give you a hint it’s not neo-cons.
Kristol goes on to write that the opening stumbles of the Obama administration has left their image a bit scuffed up . . . but those Republicans are looking PRETTY good right about now:
Meanwhile, the GOP recovery program is going pretty well. Republicans have progressed from shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition. The GOP has shown itself able to stand up and counter Obama’s arguments. The Bush hangover seems to be proving less burdensome than expected, and some of the GOP’s members of Congress are turning out to be more presentable than suspected.
I believe this is the sort of shape-your-own-reality thinking that was the hallmark of the GOP going into the Iraq war. The neo-con argument used to go: “we are mother-fucking American and we can mother-fucking do whatever we want. AND more importantly whatever we want to happen will happen. Mother-fucking America creates whatever reality it wants. Mother-fucking America does not get bogged down in geo-political tensions, or local rivalries, or even cultural sensitivities. We come in, we blow the place up, we rebuild it the way is should have been built the first time around.”
I bielive that argument has been boiled down to: “we didn’t have the troops to pull it off, but if had - OH BROTHER!”
What’s unsettling here is that Bill Kristol is not being optomistic about a Republican future, instead he’s cramming all the negative GOP press into, “shell-shocked timidity through small-bore sniping and onto robust (and responsible) opposition.”
The election brought into office a candidate that ran on idea that EVERYTHING that was done the last 8 years needs to be completely overturned. Whether or not that’s happening is another story, but he ran on that notion. To not ask existential questions about the GOP feeds into the notion that the GOP has completely lost touch with what the people of America are asking for.
First, Obama is, for PR reasons and PR reasons only (and not very good PR reasons at that), committed to closing Guantánamo. GOP members of Congress can make clear just how dangerous the remaining Guantánamo detainees are, and how irresponsible are some of the proposals for sending them abroad or trying them in the criminal justice system. The GOP should seek the release of the Defense Department report on terrorist acts by some of the less dangerous detainees released from Guantánamo under the Bush administration. Republicans can seek to slow or reverse Obama’s decision, requiring that he certify that closing Guantánamo will not endanger American lives, providing funding for Guantánamo in the budget whether or not Obama wants it, and so forth. Lots of Democrats would have trouble opposing such efforts.
Polls will be helpful here, again. Forty-four percent of Americans agree that Gitmo should be closed. Not a deal breaker. In fact, only 35 percent of American’s believe that the governement should fund family planning over seas, but that won’t stop Democrats from removing the “gag-rule.”
Moreover, the PR reasons Kristol scoffs at, are part and parcel of why terrorists have grown stronger under Bush. The Islamic world doesn’t hate us because we like freedom and democracy and nearly-naked women in our magazines. This is of course distasteful to them, but you will not find many Muslims joining the terrorist cause because of our life-style. Instead the Islamic world hates us because of the ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT. Including the BAD PR OVER GITMO. Gallup illustrates this point. In most of the nations of the Middle East surveyed the top three things the U.S. could do to improve their image are, 1) Pull out of Iraq, 2)Remove military bases from Saudi Arabia, 3) Close Gitmo
The top three U.S. actions to improve our PR in the middle-east and Kristol scoffs at it. No amount of extra-judicial killings, imprisonment without trial, or invasions of sovereign nations will stop terrorism. But good PR can and does cut the legs out from under terrorist recruitment. And Kristol’s against it. Is he wrong on every issue? No it just seems that way, because he’s wrong on all the important ones.
Second, what’s now the rationale for discriminating against ROTC on elite college campuses? The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? Well, Obama is president and the Democrats control Congress. They can change that policy if they want to.
Absolutely! But I’m sure Kristol will come against a change in the policy when Obama decides to tackle it in his second term.
According to Dana Milbank, it seems that President Obama offered a hand shake to Gordon Brown and then at the last second pulled the hand away and ran his fingers through his hair, uttering “too slow.” This was followed up with Obama pointing out a stain on Gordon Brown’s tie with his finger and then sweeping the same finger into the Prime Minister’s face, when Mr. Brown looked down. Obama finished his shameful display by suggesting that Mr. Brown’s wife “must have been something before electricity.”
Wait . . . I’m getting word that that is not the video of the Obama-Gordon meeting in the Oval Office. Let’s what embarrassing acts are found in the real video.
You can’t get anything past the investigative journalism team over at Politico. While the rest of the nation was floored by the realization that Barack Obama was in fact a black man, POLITICO (which recently changed its name from Politico to POLITICO on the internet, presumably as an overture to the hard of hearing as well as foreigners) was deep into uncovering this mystery through out the campaign. It seems that Obama was sending secret coded messages to the black community that he was indeed one of them, all the while hiding his “blackness” to white America with extensive research and regurgitation of stuff white people like.
Reading through the official list of stuff white people is like reading through the obama campaign playbook. #1 is coffee. Search “Obama and Coffee” in google and you get 28 million results. Coincidence? I think not. In fact he followed the list so closely that he made it onto the list at #8 on January 19th 2008.
Having sealed up the white people endorsement, Obama proceeded to inform black people that he was indeed black. From POLITICO:
On matters of racial identity, many observers in the African-American community say he benefits from what’s known as “dog-whistle politics.” His language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences.
One of those references that sailed over the heads of white audiences was the color of Obama’s skin.
More from POLITICO (I apologize for shouting at you who are not hearing impared or foreigners):
John McWhorter, a linguist at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said that he believes that in Obama’s case coded messaging, which can be a matter of words, sound or grammar or all of them, is partly conscious because “he knows it arouses black audiences.”
“Black English, especially the cadence, is becoming America’s youth lingua franca, especially since the mainstreaming of hip-hop. Its sound conveys warmth, authenticity and a touch of seductive danger not only to blacks but many whites, especially ones below about 50,” McWhorter said. “Obama’s tapping into that cadence helped win him the election. Imagine John Kerry or Hillary Clinton saying, ‘Yes, we can!’ It would have sounded phony — only in what I call a ‘black-cent’ can it sound prophetic and arousing.”
And only in a “white-cent” can this not sound ridiculous:
Here are the secret messages spliced together. See if you can decipher what Obama’s really saying.
Recent Comments