Quickies: the birth certificate (long form) edition

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




“We don’t have time for such silliness,” the President said this morning. And then he flew off to Chicago to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show.



John Podhoretz on the President's lack of birth control:

Since Trump was right there in front of the media's microphones talking about the birth certificate before Obama got to microphones in the White House, we were subjected to the dumbfounding sight of the press room at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. standing empty as the president found himself forced to wait out a reality-TV performer and real-estate brand-name sleazing slanderous nonsense about him and his college grades through the airwaves.

Finally, Obama must've had enough and came out to speak anyway. Then he began by complaining about how, if he had come to talk about foreign policy, the networks wouldn't have given him the time.

True -- but the reason the networks went live with his comments about his own birth certificate was that he had lowered himself to Donald Trump's level.

B-Daddy on the odd bird currently residing in the Oval Office:

But the other thing it shows is that the President is a bit odd and will fold under pressure. As long as the birth certificate could be used to allege that Republicans and Tea Partyers were kooks, playing hide the document seemed to be a good strategy. But when Trump got aggressive Team Obama folded like a lawn chair. Interestingly enough, it was Trump's aggressive moves that put Obama in a no-win situation. With the Donald calling him out, his continued refusal to publish the document looked odd, at the very least exhibiting poor judgment. But its release makes Obama look even odder and weaker. The timing is just off and awful. It looks like he caved on a matter of principle, just because he was bullied into it. To steal Dennis Miller's baseball analogy from today's O'Reilly Factor; Obama's the baseball player with "rabbit ears" and Trump's the bench rider assigned to heckle him to get him off his game.

Bizarre. Count us among those that are baffled as to why the President chose to reveal his birth certificate at this time and especially in this manner. By not revealing it, this whole thing could remain a distraction from what is really ailing this country and the President could look, you know, Presidential by not allowing himself to be dragged down into this huckster Trump's three-ring circus.

Oh well. As we're sure he's figured out by now, he ain't in Chicago anymore.





Awesome. One of the most heavily regualted economies in the world has themselves another tainted food scandal.

Three years after China was rocked by a massive tainted-milk scandal, the country has again been hit by a wave of food scares in recent weeks.

The list includes diseased pigs used for bacon; noodles made of corn, ink and paraffin; rice contaminated with heavy metals, sausages made of rotten meat and fertilizer; and pork described as "Tron blue" because it glowed in the dark from bacteria.

That so many new scandals have emerged even after the central government implemented a sweeping food-safety law in 2009 speaks to the depth of the regulation's ineffectiveness, experts say.

OK. OK. They've got poisonous food and make lead-based painted children's toys but they're so totally over us on hi-speed choo-choos, right?

Today the reality is somewhat different. In February, Liu Zhijun, minister of railways in the People's Republic of China, was arrested after investigations into cost overruns and poor performance of the ministry's showcase bullet trains, with a dash of corruption thrown in.

The modern marvel he oversaw has caused his ministry to run up some $276 billion in debt, roughly five times the amount that bankrupted General Motors. The money was mostly borrowed, ironically from the same Chinese banks that are financing our debt. And the trains aren't running safely or on time.

On April 13, the government announced train speeds would be reduced from a maximum 216 miles per hour to 186 as a result of concerns about safety, energy efficiency and affordability.

Of course, cost overruns and kickbacks could never happen here, and we all know how safe, efficient and profitable Amtrak has been. Build it and they will ride, we are told. Except that it hasn't quite worked out that way in China.

The Beijing-Tianjin line, built at a cost of $46 million per mile, is losing more than $100 million a year. Ticket prices are high for a Chinese citizenry with an estimated per-capita income of $4,300, still below the world average despite China's touted economic boom. People still prefer riding buses over these government-mandated bullet trains.

Paging Thomas Friedman. Paging Thomas Friedman.





Standing on principal: Democratic fundraising groups will take undisclosed donations, too.





Dana Milbank on partying with the ruling class:

How the journalist prom got out of control

We commend Milbank for not attending the White House Correspondants' Dinner and now we will ask him and the rest of the press corps to start asking this administration what the hell it is we are doing in Libya and to start calling out the President for his rank hypocrisy on such matters as signing statements, just for starters.





Here's some more of that new civility everyone is talking about:

Labor lefties target Walker supporters for boycotts and vandalism.

And finally... The Hammer on leading from behind:

To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do.

And it surely is an accurate description, from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It’s been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) “international community” to do what only America can.

Yep. We're in the best of hands.

Stow it! (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update)



Once again, it's the ladies that look to be displaying the most sense in the GOP.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer came out in opposition to the “birther” movement in stronger terms than ever, saying Monday that doubts about President Barack Obama’s citizenship are leading the country toward “destruction.”

Just as birtherism has been re-energized by potential presidential candidate Donald Trump’s media blitz, questioning Obama’s birthplace, the Republican governor has moved in the opposite direction.

“It’s become such a huge distraction,” Brewer said Monday night on CNN. “I, for one — I believe that from what I have seen and after speaking with … the prior governor of Hawaii that indeed he was born in Hawaii. It’s just something that I think is leading our country down a path of destruction, and it just is not serving any good purpose.”

Last week, Brewer vetoed a bill passed by the Arizona state Legislature that would have required presidential candidates to provide documentation showing that they were born in the United States to get on the state’s presidential ballot. The bill, she said in a letter about her veto, was a “distraction” and “a bridge too far” that would have created “significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona.”

Amen to that, sister.

We're beginning to think that Donald Trump is actually a Democratic plant. Funny how he just explodes onto the scene at the same time we lose interest in that other overseas distraction in Libya.

Those prices at the pump got you a little chapped? Fugheddaboutit - who's up for some more birtherism?


Of all the legitimate issues for which we can and do take this administration to task and this is the one that has everybody's attention right now? Congratulations, David Axelrod.

O.K. New rule: In winnowing down the field of GOP contenders (we're still not sure if we are actually going to endorse anybody, regardless) you're out if you support ethanol subsidies and now you're automatically DQed for flirtation in any way shape or form with birtherism. In fact, condemnation in the strongest terms a' la Governor Brewer wins you bonus points.

Talk about taking your eye off the ball.



(UPDATE #1): Surprise! The President held a birth certificate news conference early this morning causing us to nearly swerve off the road on our way into work.

Our first reaction was "why?" The administration has now taken off the table a perfect opportunity to paint birthers and anyone within arms-length of them as wackos.

Amazingly, the President said that the reason for holding this press conference was that the whole birther thing had become a distraction. Well, no kidding. Wasn't that the point for the administration in keeping this thing alive in the first place? Now, all the President has left for distractions is Libya and the waste, fraud and abuse hotline set up by the Justice Department to help investigate why gas prices are so high.

For a phenomena that was, ahem, birthed by Clinton Inc. during the Democratic primaries 3 - 3-1/2 years ago and had achieved gale force cultural impact thanks to the relentless pounding by Donald Trump, the ending proved to be rather unceremonious.

And proving that it was indeed time to get down to addressing and solving real issues, the President promptly left after his remarks refusing to field any questions from the press, the first being about General Patraeus moving to the CIA... you know, a real issue.

So, the President took the opportunity to make some political hay. Terrific. Now that we've got all this out of the way, how about that deficit reduction plan, Mr. President?

From Birchers to Birthers... an open letter:

Dear Birthers,

… please go away.

At this point, we don’t care whether or not the President can produce a birth certificate and frankly, at this point, we don’t care whether or not he is a natural born U.S. citizen. It’s over. He won. Maybe this was something to be investigated during the primaries but not now. And no, we don’t want to hear how it’s the media’s fault for not looking into this in a more vigorous fashion earlier on. You all knew they were in the tank for the guy from jump street so don’t whine about it now.

This whole thing is such a loser. What’s the end game? That Obama is forced to step down as President? Awesome. Mission accomplished. Now excuse us while we remain holed-up at BwD world headquarters subsiding on MREs and tequila out of our earthquake survival kit while watching a 24/7 two-week run of “The Burning of America” on every single cable news channel with live reports from L.A., Chicago, Atlanta and Detroit. Proud of yourselves? Hey, look who gets elevated from the America’s ribbon-cutter-in-chief to the post of the most powerful man on the planet. And better yet, look who is now promoted to “a heart beat away”. Nice work, children. That was a real service to the country.

And do you think any national Republican candidate would ever again get anything resembling a fair shake from the other side or the media? Take the unhinged savagery unleashed upon Sarah Palin and her family and multiply it by about 10.

When there is plentiful ammunition provided in the very legislation crafted by Congress to derail both cap and trade and health care reform, you all instead wish to indulge in these paranoid/delusional fantasies that 9-11 was an inside job and that Obama is a crypto-Muslim and thus expend credibility capital on this crap. Proud of yourselves?

Maybe now you realize that elections have consequences and that considering the present alternative, McCain may not have been such a bad pick, afterall.


Just so nothing got lost in the mix and so that we are crystal clear in the sentiments which we wish to convey… go away. Just. Go. Away.

Sincerely,
The editorial board of Beers with Demo