“Rudy Giuliani Is A Cretinous Dirtbag”: ‘Obama Never Praises America’ May Be The Single Dumbest Criticism Republicans Have
Not that you needed a reminder that Rudy Giuliani is a contemptible jerk, but the former New York mayor has managed to find his way back in the news in the only way he can, which is to say something appalling. I’m going to try to take this opportunity to explore something meaningful about the way we all look at our allies and opponents, but first, here’s what Giuliani said at an event for Scott Walker:
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
O.K., so we’ve heard this a million times before, though usually from talk radio hosts and pundits, but less often from prominent politicians. Offered a chance to clarify later, here’s how Rudy explained himself:
“Well first of all, I’m not questioning his patriotism. He’s a patriot, I’m sure,” the former mayor of New York said on Fox and Friends Thursday morning. “What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America.”
Obama is different from his predecessors in that respect, Giuliani said.
“I do hear him criticize America much more often than other American presidents,” he told the morning show hosts. “And when it’s not in the context of an overwhelming number of statements about the exceptionalism of America, it sounds like he’s more of a critic than he is a supporter.”
He’s not questioning Obama’s patriotism, he’s just saying he doesn’t love America. Got it—thanks for clearing that up. I’m not saying Rudy is foolish and immoral, I’m just saying he’s a cretinous dirtbag. So no offense.
But what I’m really interested in is Giuliani’s explanation that he “very rarely hear[s]” Obama say patriotic things, but he “do[es] hear him criticize America.” It’s safe to say a lot of conservatives feel the same way. They hear these criticisms of America all the time from Obama! But never a word of praise for this country!
It would be great if the next person who interviewed Rudy (or anyone else making the same claim) asked him to name some of these many criticisms of America that he has “heard” from Obama. Because my guess is that he wouldn’t be able to come up with any. What he has heard, however, is other people saying that Obama criticizes America. If you spend a day watching Fox News, you’ll probably hear that assertion a dozen times. The idea that Obama constantly criticizes America, like the fictitious “apology tour” assertion from Obama’s first term, is something conservatives say over and over but almost never back up with any actual evidence.
If pressed, they might be able to come up with times when Obama has said that prior administrations have made mistakes, like the Bush administration enacting a policy of torturing prisoners. But these aren’t criticisms of America per se, any more than Republicans are criticizing America when they say we shouldn’t have passed the Affordable Care Act. If criticizing something the American government did means you’re aren’t a patriot, then the Republican Party is the most anti-American organization in the world today. Al Qaeda has nothing on them.
Perhaps even more revealing is Giuliani’s assertion that he rarely hears Obama praise America. The truth is that like all presidents, Obama heaps praise on America constantly. For instance, here’s a bit of vicious America-hating from his last State of the Union address:
I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong. I still believe that we are one people. I still believe that together, we can do great things, even when the odds are long.
I believe this because over and over in my six years in office, I have seen America at its best. I’ve seen the hopeful faces of young graduates from New York to California, and our newest officers at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, New London. I’ve mourned with grieving families in Tucson and Newtown, in Boston, in West Texas, and West Virginia. I’ve watched Americans beat back adversity from the Gulf Coast to the Great Plains, from Midwest assembly lines to the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. I’ve seen something like gay marriage go from a wedge issue used to drive us apart to a story of freedom across our country, a civil right now legal in states that seven in 10 Americans call home.
So I know the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity of the American people who every day live the idea that we are our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper. And I know they expect those of us who serve here to set a better example.
Look at any major speech Obama has given, and you’ll find similar passages. But Giuliani isn’t lying when he says he doesn’t “hear” that. The words pass through his ears into his brain, but they don’t register, because he decided long ago that Barack Obama is incapable of such thoughts.
And if you read that passage or any of a hundred like it directly to Giuliani, how would he respond? He’d probably say that, sure, Obama spoke those words, but they weren’t an expression of his real feelings; they were artifice, meant to conceal the sinister truth lying deep within. The words tell us nothing. On the other hand, when Obama says something critical about a Bush administration policy, the words reveal his hatred of America.
To a certain degree we’re all prey to this tendency. Once we’ve made our conclusions about who our political opponents are deep within their souls, we want to accept at face value only their statements that reinforce the view we already have of them. But you’ll notice that Giuliani wasn’t only stating his opinion about what lies in Obama’s heart, he attempted to justify that opinion with a statement of fact. Giuliani’s argument is that he concluded that Obama doesn’t love America because he assessed that Obama so seldom says nice things about America. That’s like saying that you think Tom Brady is a bad quarterback because he hasn’t won any Super Bowls. Maybe you have some other reason why you think Tom Brady is a bad quarterback, or maybe you just don’t like him, but if what you offer as the basis of your opinion is his lack of Super Bowl wins, there’s no reason why anyone should take you seriously.
Not that there was much reason to take Rudy Giuliani seriously to begin with. But he’s expressing beliefs that are not just common but absolutely rampant on the right.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Writer, The American Prospect, February 19, 2015
“Is This So Hard To Understand?”: Why Calling ISIS Islamic Only Plays Into Its Hands
If you want to help ISIS and Al Qaeda, then call them Islamic. That’s one of my big takeaways from this week’s White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which I attended on Wednesday.
Speakers at the CVE summit, which featured counterterrorism experts, elected officials including the Mayor of Paris, law enforcement, and Muslim leaders, offered a few reasons for this proposition. First, it’s simply inaccurate. As President Obama said as the closing speaker of the day, ISIS and Al Qaeda “no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism.” Obama also offered a sentiment very similar to the NRA mantra: Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
I understand that some will dismiss that as political correctness. Well, maybe then these reasons will move those people. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) put it at the summit, ISIS wants us to believe its actions are based in Islam because it frames the conflict as a religious war between the West and Islam. This then enables these terror groups to claim they are the defenders of Islam, thus, assisting them in raising funds and attracting recruits.
But there’s another point raised subtly by some, including Obama, and more explicitly by Jordanian counterterrorism expert Suleiman Bakhit, whom I spoke to one on one, that has received little to no coverage in our media. ISIS and Al Qaeda not only want people in the Muslim world to think their actions are based on Islam, but they want Westerners to as well. Why? Because they hope that people will retaliate against Muslims living in the West for Al Qaeda and ISIS’ actions. If these Muslims are then subject to demonization, hate crimes or worse, the terrorists can tell Muslims: “See, the West hates Islam! That is why you should join us to fight them.”
Bakhit, who was also a participant at the CVE summit, interestingly mentioned the film The Battle of Algiers as instructive in understanding Al Qaeda and ISIS. This is the second time an expert has mentioned this film in this context, the first being Rula Jabreal a few weeks ago.
For those unfamiliar with this classic 1967 film, it tells the story about Algeria’s fight for independence from France in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The Algerian National Liberation front (FLN) engaged in terrorist activities against the French. While FLN leaders knew they could not defeat the French military, they hoped that the French authorities would respond in a brutal and barbaric way against the Algerian population as a whole. Why? Because it would likely stir up more support for the independence movement by the masses of Algerians who were not part of the FLN. And that’s exactly what happened, with Algeria wining its independence a few years later.
ISIS and Al Qaeda understand they can’t defeat the West militarily, but they can, with as few as two people as we saw with attack on Charlie Hebdo, increase anti-Muslim sentiment across the West. In turn the increased alienation of some in the Muslim community from mainstream society makes it easier to recruit and radicalize.
That ties into the most common theme heard at the summit, namely that the lure of ISIS and Al Qaeda is to offer people on the fringes of society an opportunity to be a part of something. They use social media and peer-to-peer recruiting effectively by preying on the economically disadvantaged and marginalized, offering them self worth, similar to gangs. That, not any promises connected to the principles of Islam, was the key to ISIS and Al Qaeda’s recruiting success.
Another big take away was that while the summit was billed as a look at all violent extremism, in reality over 90 percent of the discussion focused on Muslims. But as the ADL’s Oren Seagal explained on one panel, in last 10 years, non-Muslim terrorism has killed far more Americans. I made that very point in my article earlier this week previewing the summit.
This approach can cause an inadvertent but tangible backlash to the Muslim community as Linda Sarsour, a Muslim American leader in New York City, correctly pointed out. Sarsour told me via email that by primarily focusing on Muslims, the summit “gives the green light to local and federal law enforcement agencies to subject us to unwarranted surveillance.”
Muslims clearly want to counter terrorism and overwhelmingly want to play a role with the government in preventing radicalization of anyone from our community—even though statistically we are talking maybe 150 people who have traveled to the Middle East from the United States to join ISIS, yet that is still uncertain. But trust is the key for this relationship to work. That very point was made by law enforcement and Muslim American leaders that had joined forces in three cities—Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Boston—as part of the federal government’s pilot program to counter radicalization.
Even President Obama noted “that engagement with communities can’t be a cover for surveillance” because “that makes it harder for us to build the trust that we need to work together.”
And Obama did his part to engender more trust with the Muslim community. He acknowledged that Muslims have been a part of the fabric of our nation since its inception and that many have served as police officers, first responders, and soldiers.
Obama also addressed anti-Muslim bigotry, mentioning the horrible murders of three Muslim American students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina last week. And in a particularly poignant moment, the President read a Valentine’s Day Card sent to him from a young Muslim girl named Sabrina who wrote, “I enjoy being an American. But I am worried about people hating Muslims…If some Muslims do bad things, that doesn’t mean all of them do…Please tell everyone that we are good people and we’re just like everyone else.”
Will the CVE Summit yield any results in countering radicalization? Will it cause a backlash against American Muslims? Time will tell. But the one thing I’m certain is that if you want to help ISIS and Al Qaeda, then by all means call them Islamic. If you want to defeat them, call them what they are: terrorists.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, February 19, 2015
“A Regrettable Ignorance”: Don’t Know Much About History, Rick Perry Edition
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), still an unannounced presidential candidate, campaigned in New Hampshire last week and told a group of voters that he and Abraham Lincoln share an ideological bond.
“Lincoln read the Constitution, and he also read the Bill of Rights, and he got down to the Tenth Amendment, and he liked it,” Perry boasted. “That Tenth Amendment that talks about these states, these laboratories of democracy…. The Tenth Amendment that the federal government is limited, its powers are limited by the Constitution.”
It’s easy to understand how the Texan might be confused. Lincoln and Perry share a party label, so the former governor apparently assumes they share a political outlook, too. And given that Lincoln was arguably the nation’s greatest president, it stands to reason that the Texas Republican, like most candidates, would want to associate himself with the Lincoln legacy.
The problem, however, is that Perry has no idea what he’s talking about. Josh Zeitz, who taught American history and politics at Cambridge and Princeton, explained the other day that the former Texas governor “got Lincoln backwards” and Perry’s entire argument “betrays a regrettable ignorance of Lincoln’s political outlook.”
Before he reluctantly became a Republican, Abraham Lincoln was a lifelong Whig – a party founded in opposition to Andrew Jackson and in support of a strong and active central state…. A passionate supporter of Henry Clay’s “American System,” Lincoln believed that states should ultimately be subordinate to a strong federal government, and that Washington had a big role to play in matters as far and wide as internal improvements, currency, banking and taxation. […]
As president, Lincoln vastly expanded the federal government’s role…. Maybe Rick Perry spent too much time reading from those widely disputed history and government standards that the Texas Board of Education, in its infinite wisdom, foisted on textbook publishers. Whatever the cause, he’s confusing Abraham Lincoln – erstwhile Whig and promoter of a strong central government – for a strict Tenth Amendment devotee. That, he certainly was not.
As Jon Chait reminded me, Perry has also flirted openly with the idea of state secession, which probably wouldn’t have impressed the president who won the Civil War.
In 2009, the then-governor was so eager to show his contempt for President Obama that Perry denounced the United States government as “oppressive,” arguing that it was “time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas.” Soon after, he said he doesn’t want to “dissolve” the union of the United States, “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”
Around the same time, Perry said of Texas, “[W]hen we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
I won’t pretend to be a Lincoln scholar, but I’m comfortable describing the iconic American president as someone who wasn’t comfortable with the idea of state secession.
All of this must be terribly inconvenient for Republicans. Lincoln believed in a strong federal government, a progressive income tax, and considerable infrastructure investments, making him sound an awful lot like a Democrat by 21st-century standards. Indeed, some conservatives who’ve read up on Lincoln see him as something of an enemy – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) co-wrote a book with a neo-Confederate who boasted that he raises “a personal toast every May 10 to celebrate John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.”
Perry may want to take Lincoln back as some kind of conservative hero, but he’ll have to ignore literally every historical detail to make the case to unsuspecting voters.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 17, 2015
“A Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card”: Boehner Offered Free Pass Out Of Shutdown Mess, But He Doesn’t Want To Take It
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s Monday night ruling temporarily blocking President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program provided a political lifeline for congressional Republicans. But whether or not they’re smart enough to take it remains unclear.
For weeks, Republicans have been hurtling towards another catastrophic shutdown debacle. Furious over President Obama’s immigration action, congressional Republicans devised an illogical scheme to fight back: They would separate the Department of Homeland Security from December’s government funding bill, and then use it as a hostage. Unless President Obama abandons his policy by February 27, DHS would enter a partial shutdown.
The strategy never had a prayer of working, for several reasons. President Obama has long since proven that he is done giving in to Republican ransom demands. Shutting down DHS would not actually do anything to stop President Obama’s deferral plan. And the American public was always going to blame the GOP for any shutdown crisis. (This was confirmed by a CNN poll released Tuesday, which found that 53 percent of Americans would hold Republicans responsible, while just 30 percent would blame the president, and 13 percent would blame both.) Unless they planned to never pay DHS workers again, the only possible outcome for the GOP was embarrassing defeat.
But still, Republicans went all in. One month ago, the House passed a bill linking DHS funding with blocking DAPA. Although it repeatedly failed to pass the Senate, House Speaker John Boehner insisted that “the House has done its job,” and has flatly refused to consider a clean funding bill. Meanwhile, even if the Senate somehow does pass a bill limiting Obama’s authority, the president would veto it. A politically catastrophic shutdown seemed increasingly inevitable.
So one might think that House Republicans would welcome Judge Hanen’s ruling as a get-out-of-jail-free card. With DAPA blocked, pending appeal, they could pass a clean DHS funding bill with a clean conscience, tell their constituents that the matter is in the courts’ hands now, and save the fight for another day.
But it’s never that easy with the Republican caucus.
Speaker Boehner’s reaction to the ruling suggests that he’s still committed to taking this all the way.
“The president said 22 times he did not have the authority to take the very action on immigration he eventually did, so it is no surprise that at least one court has agreed,” Boehner said in a statement. “We will continue to follow the case as it moves through the legal process. Hopefully, Senate Democrats who claim to oppose this executive overreach will now let the Senate begin debate on a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department.”
In case there was any doubt, Democrats are still not ready to begin debate on forcing a maximum-deportation policy on the White House.
“It’s perfectly appropriate to take this issue to court, but it is completely unacceptable for Republicans to hold up funding for the Department of Homeland Security while the case wends its way through the legal system,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement. “This procedural ruling, in our opinion, is very unlikely to be upheld, but regardless of the outcome Democrats remain united in our belief that funding for the Department of Homeland Security should not be used as a ransom by Republicans, period.”
Republicans clearly learned the wrong lessons from their last government shutdown, which they overcame at the ballot box in November. They are extremely unlikely to be so lucky again in 2016, when the elections will be fought on a much friendlier terrain for Democrats. On Monday night, Judge Hanen threw the GOP a lifeline; they’d be wise to grab it.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, February 17, 2015
“McConnell Is Blowing It…Big Time”: McConnell Has Forgotten What Is At The Heart Of The Strategy He Invented
My take on Sen. Mitch McConnell has always been that he is not so interested in issues/policies as he is in the power game of politics. That approach was never on display more clearly than when he said that his number one goal was to ensure that Obama was a one-term president – in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Given that, I will credit McConnell with being a good strategist. No matter how bad his total obstructionist tactics were for the country, they were a fairly effective power play. That’s why it’s been so fascinating to watch him fail so miserably lately.
As I wrote at the beginning of this Republican-controlled Congress, McConnell’s initial strategy was to paint President Obama as the new obstructionist by forcing him to veto legislation that would otherwise undo his agenda. But that is getting all gummed up by either the Democrats in the Senate standing strong or the lunatic caucus in his party making compromise impossible. The Majority Leader finds himself between a rock and a hard place and can’t seem to get much of anything to the President’s desk.
So instead of being able to label President Obama as the obstructionist, McConnell is now having to resort to using that one on the Democrats in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Democrats Wednesday of knee-jerk obstructionist tactics, flipping a script that Democrats used many times in recent years.
McConnell criticized Democrats for filibustering a motion to debate a House-passed bill funding the Department of Homeland Security that contained language blocking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Aside from the irony of that coming from the great wielder of obstructionism, it seems that McConnell has forgotten what is at the heart of the strategy he invented. Here’s former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren’s explanation.
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people…
There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.”
Those “low-information voters” don’t tend to know which party is pursuing which legislative tactic, but they sure do know which party holds the presidency. And they’ve likely heard about the “shellacking” the President’s party took in the 2014 midterms that gave control of Congress to the opposing party.
So the spectacle voters are witnessing right now is a Democratic President who is busy getting things done while Congress is gridlocked and McConnell whines that Democrats in the Senate won’t let him get anything done.
In other words, you’re blowing it McConnell…big time!
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 14, 2015
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