[Guest post by DRJ]

Following President Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 campaign finance decision during his State of the Union address, Vice President Joe Biden and the White House defended Obama’s comments:

“Vice President Joe Biden defended Obama’s remarks. “The president didn’t question the integrity of the court or the decision that they made,” Biden told ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “He questioned the judgment of it.”

The White House issued a fact sheet defending Obama’s statements, noting that the four justices who dissented from the decision had raised concerns that it would open the door to unchecked spending by foreign-owned corporations.

But the majority decision in the case indicated the ruling was not addressing the question of whether the government could act to prevent foreign individuals or associations from influencing U.S. elections.”

I think this raises a real question about Obama’s willingness to listen to both sides of issues. He only listened to the 4 dissenters when it came to this opinion. Similarly, it was revealed last month that Obama likes to surf the web and read magazines but his preferences for the New Yorker, the Economist, Rolling Stone and Andrew Sullivan reveal a decided ideological tilt.

Is Obama an ideologue? Talking to Republicans today, he claims he isn’t. But that’s hard to square with reports like those above and a recent interview in which Obama said it doesn’t matter what you say or do if you are a good person who is “on the right side of history”:

“Obama, in an interview today for Washington Watch with Roland Martin set to air on TV One on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, explained why he was so ready Saturday to forgive the Nevada Democrat for telling the authors of Game Change during the ‘08 campaign that Obama would run well because is a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

“For him to have used some inartful language in trying to praise me, and for people to try to make hay out of that, makes absolutely no sense,” Obama said today in the taped interview, an excerpt aired this evening by CBS News (see it above) and on other broadcast networks. “This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.”

President Obama talks like an ideologue whether he thinks he’s one or not.

– DRJ

[Posted by Karl]

Andrew Sullivan is wallowing in self-pity over what he anticipates as a double digit win for Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race. It is a display that has television’s Andy Levy and IMAO’s Frank Fleming feeling sorry for Sully. But that pity might stop people from noticing that “the most popular one- or two- or three-man blog on the internet” has descended from unhinged conspiracy theorist to delusional hack.

Consider his analysis of the Massachusetts special election:

I can see no alternative scenario but a huge – staggeringly huge – victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago. Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama’s Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year. If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems.

I don’t remember that the GOP gave Obama zero votes on the stimulus bill, mostly because Snowe, Collins and Specter voted for it. I do recall Sen. Jim DeMint’s “Waterloo” comment, as it pointed out how utterly self-centered Obama was in trying to ram his unpopular proposals through Congress. I don’t remember that they beat Obama on taking over the US healthcare system, mostly because both houses of Congress have passed bills, and can pass a final bill without a single Republican vote. (One wonders why Sullivan, who claims to be a True Conservative, would see either of the health boondoggles Congress passed as desirable, but I digress.) I do not believe Obama has inherited massive debt, mostly because the claim is horse manure on at least four levels.

Then there are Sullivan’s predictions:

Even if Coakley wins – and my guess is she’ll lose by a double digit margin – the bill is dead. The most Obama can hope for is a minimalist alternative that simply mandates that insurance companies accept people with pre-existing conditions and are barred from ejecting patients when they feel like it. That’s all he can get now – and even that will be a stretch.

The earlier, less deranged Sullivan would have been smart enough — and attentive enough to the debate — to know that mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions has no chance of passage without coming up with the funding to prevent insurers from going into a death spiral, which sets you down the road to requiring people to buy insurance, etc.

It is one thing to entertain bizarre conspiracy theories about Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, and so on. It is another to sloppily regurgitate partisan Democratic whine about the current political environment that has no basis in reality. Does he ever look in the mirror and entertain the thought that Obama and the Dems are suffering now because his hyperventilating, sycophantic paeans to Obama — and those of his fellow travelers in the establishment media — set up unrealistic expectations? Naaaaaaaah.

–Karl

Quite a reaction in the post asking whether Sarah Palin is a Birther. Ace thinks Birtherism is stupid but has no problem with Palin’s “empty” answer; Allah thinks she should have repudiated Birtherism more clearly.

Here’s my take: Obama was born in the U.S. There is a legally valid birth certificate that is real and has been released to the media for inspection, coupled with a contemporaneous birth announcement.

At the same time, it appears clear that the state of Hawaii has a “long form birth certificate” that could be inspected by the media if Obama requested it. Not only has he failed to request it, but he has also spent a good deal of money fighting court battles instead of releasing it. This is what makes people suspicious.

Why is he fighting it? It seems to me that there are three possible reasons: 1) He really was born outside the U.S.; 2) there is something else about the long-form certificate that is potentially embarrassing; or 3) he finds it politically useful to keep the issue alive to argue that there is a fringe element that opposes him.

I find option #1 vanishingly improbable, based on the evidence cited above.

Whether the real answer is #2 or #3 — or something else entirely — I have no idea. I think it would be fair to point out the possibility that he is hiding something embarrassing — without endorsing, even implicitly, the ridiculous suggestion that he was born outside this country.

But that’s not what Sarah Palin did. She pandered to the crazy conspiracy theorists in the Birther movement.

If Sarah Palin didn’t mean to pander to the Truthers, then she misspoke. Because, despite the incredibly charitable reading many of you gave to her words, she called Trutherism questions “fair game” and an issue that was being “rightfully” raised. There is a difference between saying that someone has the right to raise an issue, and saying that the issue is “rightfully” raised. As Allah says:

The key point isn’t whether voters have the right to ask questions but whether a question is fair after a certain amount of evidence has been provided. That’s where Palin got in trouble last night, I think. Of course Truthers have the right to be skeptical about 9/11, but does anyone think it’s fair that they still are? Where you come down on the Birtherism debate depends on whether you think that level of evidence has been reached yet, and Palin’s initial comments to Humphreys — it’s a “fair question,” it’s “fair game,” potentially something worth raising in a debate — made it sound like she didn’t. Calling it a “stupid conspiracy” later on Facebook clarified that she did.

If I said that the question of whether Bush orchestrated 9/11 is “fair game” and is “rightfully” raised, any rational person would say I’m a moron.

Yes, 9/11 Truthers have the right to make stupid arguments about how fire does not melt steel. But they are idiots. The issue is not “fair game” but rather bullshit. It is not “rightfully” raised because it’s bullshit. And when you go around saying that a bullshit issue is “fair game” that is “rightfully” raised, without saying you think it’s bullshit, then you’re pandering. Pure and simple.

Like Allah, I’m glad Palin clarified her comments, and suggested (through the title of her Facebook entry) that Birtherism is a “stupid conspiracy.” But I also would have respected her more if she had said so more clearly in the radio show.

UPDATE: Naturally, Andrew Sullivan is using her statements to justify his investigations of her birth canal.

Sullivan fail.

It’s apology time, Milky Loads.

Ace Uterus Detective Andy Sullivan is on hiatus, as he searches a new treasure trove of clews to the Mystery of the Palin Pregnancy:

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it – and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided – is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin’s unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning – specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy – we feel it’s vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

This baby just finished reading Sullivan’s post.

UPDATE: It just gets weirder:

I hope to be up half the night trying to write a post on the great mystery of the stories about Trig, stories that have bedeviled the blogosphere and many others for months.

[Cue Twilight Zone theme.]

UPDATE x2: From the iowahawk archives. Thanks to Stashiu for the reminder.

[Posted by Karl]

The following, courtesy of Pollster.com, are a series of poll averages measuring opinion about ObamaCare.

This is the basic poll of polls, including different types of samples, polling methodologies, and question wording, showing 50.5% disapprove, 43.7% approve.

(more…)

In “Playgirl.” Andrew Sullivan must be thrilled.

Allahpundit, as usual, has the best line:

The only reason anyone’s heard of him is because of something he did with his schwanz. Might as well show it off.

(”Schwanz.” Is that a real word?) (UPDATE: Yes!)

Anyway, this Levi Johnston. He’s a real prince of a guy, isn’t he?

P.S. OK: technically, “nude” does not necessarily mean “with his wiener exposed.” But listen, do you want accurate or do you want funny?

This is my “Okay, I’ll post about Andrew Sullivan if you stop writing me about him” post.

Via the Internet Scofflaw, we learned that Andrew Sullivan once sanctimoniously wrote:

My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul.

So when Andrew Sullivan gets busted for something, he will of course demand to be prosecuted if those less powerful than he are also being prosecuted. Right?

Heh.

Via a swarm of e-mailers, we learn that in a recent case where Sullivan got busted (for pot), charges were dismissed — and a judge has written:

In the Court’s view, in seeking leave to dismiss the charge against Mr. Sullivan, the United States Attorney is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances.

You see, his arrest could endanger his immigration status. Getting busted for pot probably endangers others’ immigration status as well, but they are not Andrew Sullivan, Famous Hypocrite, friend to Obama, and client of the brother of a U.S. Congressman.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that anyone would be surprised.

It’s quite apparent that there is one standard for Andrew Sullivan and another standard for the rest of us. But we already knew that. Andrew Sullivan is the world’s biggest hypocrite. He is a man who decried promiscuous gay sex:

It all began in April, when Sullivan published a mocking account of his recent visit to San Francisco. “The streets were dotted with the usual hairy-backed homos,” he had snarked. “I saw one hirsute fellow dressed from head to toe in flamingo motifs.”

. . . .

This was classic Sullivan, right down to the contempt for what he calls the “libidinal pathology” of gay sexual culture. He considers gay marriage the only healthy alternative to “a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation.” He has hectored gay men for their obsession with “manic muscle factories,” and written at length about the need for “responsibility” in the age of AIDS.

And then advertised online for promiscuous gay sex (link not safe for work):

I take loads in my ass.
I take loads in my mouth.
I give loads in asses.
I give loads in mouths.

TURN-ONS
hairy hung masculine guys

And when Sullivan’s penchant for seeking cheap sex from strangers was revealed, he pontificated that it was proper to ignore the controversy:

The truth is: no-one’s legal, consensual, adult private life should be plundered and exposed for political purposes.

I ignored the requests for comment because there was nothing to comment on. . . . I was asked to confirm a story presented anonymously, the only salient details of which I believed to be untrue. Why should I answer?

But when it came to Sarah Palin’s son, Sullivan was only to happy to press Palin to answer a story presented anonymously, the only salient details of which were untrue. Did Sullivan think Palin should answer? Naturally, that was different:

Why not kill this rumor with Palin’s medical records? A 43 year old woman’s pregnancy with a Downs Syndrome child would have been intensely monitored, and the records must be a mile long. Just release them, ok?

One standard for me, another for thee. If there is any point on which Sullivan is consistent, that is it.

Seems kind of blatant to me . . . but maybe I’m biased.

UPDATE: Another example from the same site, here. They probably have every single post of mine.

UPDATE x2: Here is another site (”Chatter Box Forum”) that routinely lifts every single word posted on my site. It used to steal my template, like the “t.love.com” site currently does — but now it “only” steals the verbal content. [UPDATE: No, they still steal the template too.]

So if I wanted to sue these people, how hard would it be?

UPDATE x3: Many other sites are being lifted wholesale, as you might expect. One of them: CBS News.

So can I just create a subdomain of patterico.com and lift the entire content of CBS News wholesale via the magic of RSS? Think of the possibilities! I could steal Andrew Sullivan’s entire site and link to his posts by linking a patterico.com subdomain! I could create a subdomain and recreate a porn site to maximize revenue! The theft possibilities are endless!

Incidentally, I see commenters arguing that I get clickthroughs from this. As far as I can tell, I don’t — unless you x out the page. Clicking on the banner for my site takes you back to t.love.com. Also, an odd thing about the site: it updates in real time. If you leave a comment, you will see it appear there immediately.

Kudos to the first commenter who can locate the t.love.com URL for this post. For the irony.

Yes, that is according to Andrew Sullivan (link not safe for work, but posted to remind readers of Sullivan’s hypocrisy). He says:

I sure hope [Sarah Palin's] family recovers from what she has done to them.

So quoth the man who has been responsible for more misery to Sarah Palin’s family than anyone else I can think of.

Quiz: which woman-hating gay man has done more to set back the cause of gay rights, by engaging in unreasoned and unhinged attacks against popular and attractive women in the public eye?

a) Perez Hilton
b) Andrew Sullivan (again, link is not safe for work)

Me, I have trouble deciding. But if gay marriage doesn’t catch on in Andrew Sullivan’s lifetime, the blame will lie in no small part on people like Sullivan, who have reinforced negative stereotypes of gay men as women-hating queens (and promiscuous, immoral sex addicts — click the not-safe-for-work link if you have any doubt about that).

Well done, Andy. Well done indeed.

P.S. I sure hope gays recover from what Sullivan has done to them.

[Posted by Karl]

The fair use doctrine constrains me to quote only the introduction of “Through the Looking Glass With Andrew Sullivan,” by Christopher Badeaux at The New Ledger:

Perhaps the single, common life goal of every intellectual, pseudo-intellectual, and intellectual aspirant, is to be a true Renaissance man — a genius whose force of will and flexible, dominating intellect allows him to master or nearly master not one or two, but a whole host of related and unrelated fields of study and practice.

Sadly, not everyone can be Leonardo da Vinci or Karol Wojtyla. Or Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan, who has worn dozens of hats in his lifetime, is truly unique. He stands astride the worlds of politics, journalism, theology, foreign policy, and applied obstetrics like the Colossus of Rhodes. A former editor for The New Republic — a publication that benefited from his razor-sharp insights on, among other things, the early masterpieces of Stephen Glass — columnist-about-town for Time, the Atlantic, and various Fleet Street rags; a Ph.D in the works of Michael Oakeshott, recognized by true conservatives everywhere as the only conservative thinker of the last four hundred years; and an itinerant blogger whose once-eponymous site has migrated to Time and now the Atlantic, Sullivan is one of those Washington fixtures that fit unusually well on the late-night talk show circuit, as he himself likes to demonstrate. Like a real-life, hyper-garrulous Forrest Gump, Sullivan has been present for, or at least has shared his thoughts — stray, organized, rational, and delusional — on most of the major events of the last twenty five years, at a rate that has only increased since he began blogging (before it was cool) and taking long vacations after pledge drives (which has been cool forever). More impressive than his output is his utter lack of fear of self-contradiction, flights of laughter-inducing hyperbole, public obsessiveness, repeated self-contradiction, betrayals of utter ignorance, and failed attempts to mimic the Bard by coining bizarre neologisms to match his wandering moods.

Few among us have the raw intellectual firepower to go where he has. Fortunately, the internet tubes allow us to track his movements over time – an otherwise dizzying effort made more vertiginous by Sullivan’s kaleidoscopic mind. As with all things Sullivan, the best place to start is with human genitalia…

Allahpundit asks whether this is the definitive Sullivan takedown.  As good as it is, I do not think the definitive takedown has been compiled yet.  A truly comprehensive piece would also have to draw on The Village Voice piece by Richard Goldstein, detailing how unhinged Sullivan was, even before 9/11.  Also, inasmuch as Badeaux notes that Sullivan’s archives have become difficult to search as he moves from site to site, a definitive piece would scour them and quote at length from pieces like this one from October 2001:

THE COMING CONFLICT: The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naﶥ in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat. I know that this means that this conflict is deepening and widening beyond its initial phony stage. But what choice do we have? Inaction in the face of biological warfare is an invitation for more in a world where that is now thinkable. Appropriate response will no doubt inflame an already inflamed region, as people seek solace through the usual ideological fire. Either way the war will grow and I feel nothing but dread in my heart. But we didn’t seek this conflict. It has sought us. If we do not wage war now, we may have to wage an even bloodier war in the very near future. These are bleak choices, but what else do we have?

A post like that could be compared with Sullivan’s blase observation in August 2008: “John Judis wants a Congressional investigation into the source of the rumors that the anthrax attacks in 2001 originated in Iraq. “  Judis should asked Sullivan!

Furthermore, while Badeaux addresses Sullivan’s Trig Trutherism in delicious detail, a truly definitive piece would address all of the bizarre conspiracy theories Sullivan has floated in recent years, complete with sinister allusions to “the Likud effect.”

Badeaux’s piece may not be definitive, but that does not render it any less devastating on the subjects it does cover, both in substance and tone, so RTWT, natch.

–Karl

[Guest post by DRJ]

According to John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

“Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.
***
We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It’s pretty despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush’s top political appointees. [NOTE: Maybe it was.] I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn’t just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn’t motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn’t be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn’t discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can’t).

He actually argued that the courts shouldn’t consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.

And before Obama claims he didn’t have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we’ll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was “abhorrent.” Folks, Obama’s lawyers are even trying to diminish the impact of Roemer and Lawrence, our only two big Supreme Court victories. Obama is quite literally destroying our civil rights gains with this brief. He’s taking us down for his own benefit.

Holy cow. Obama invoked incest and people marrying children.”

More at Americablog, including a link to the Obama Administration brief.

John Berry, Obama’s “openly gay Office of Personnel Management director,” asked at a recent DOJ Gay Pride Month event “Where do you stand? Honoring love as precious and true wherever you find it, or with those who would demean or deny it?”

If same-sex marriage is the answer, now gays know where Obama stands.

– DRJ