This Explains A Lot (With Updates)

From TPM:

A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll finds that 77% of Americans believe President Obama was Indeed Born in the United States, with only 11% saying he was not -- but there's no clear verdict among Republicans.

Among Republicans, it's a much weaker plurality of only 42% who say Obama was born in the U.S., with 28% saying he was not, with a very high undecided number of 30%. Among Democrats, the number is 93%-4%, and among independents it's 83%-8%.

This means that for Republicans to openly admit that Obama is indeed a natural-born American citizen, they risk alienating a significant chunk of their loyal base. And on the other hand, they could scare away independents by humoring the tin-foil hat crowd.

I must admit that I was a bit surprised by these numbers. For some reason, I was under the impression that the Birthers (i.e., Lou Dobbs and other people who were dropped on their heads at birth) constituted only a small -- but very vocal -- percentage of Republicans.

But now it turns out that 28% of Republicans think that Obama is an illegal alien (with 30% of the GOP "undecided" on that issue). No wonder Republicans in Congress are going out of their way to not piss off these people and why well-known racists such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are actively courting this crowd.

But then again, I shouldn't be too surprised by the numbers. After all, George W. Bush maintained around a 28% approval rating even after it was clear to just about everyone that he was one of the worst presidents in American history.

I do think it is highly likely that a large number of the Republicans who claim they think Obama is an illegal alien don't actually believe that. They instead embrace Birtherism because it is a way for them to express their personal outrage that a Negro man has been elected President of the United States. As I mentioned before, they cannot openly express their race hatred, so this is the next best thing for them.

UPDATE: At least one person agrees with me:

Politico’s Glenn Thrush asks, “When do we start a serious dialog about the Birther movement being a proxy for racism that is unacceptable to articulate in more direct terms?”

UPDATE II: The price of idiocy:

According to analysis of Nielsen data by the New York Observer, as criticism of Lou Dobbs has continued to rise over his questioning of President Obama's citizenship, his ratings at CNN have continued to go down.

In fact, Dobbs' audience has decreased 15% in total viewers and 27% in the all important age 25 to 54 demographic group since the start of the controversy.

The Best Lawyers That Racism Can Buy (With Update)

From The Washington Independent:

One of the more amusing quirks of the “birther” movement is the quality of the legal minds in whom Obama birth certificate obsessives are placing their trust — and their occasional donations. Phil Berg, the original “birther” lawyer, has been forced to pay out sanctions for legal malpractice. Orly Taitz, famously, got her law degree from an online correspondence school. And it turns out that Charles Lincoln, who has been assisting Taitz — he provided judges with amended complaints in Keyes et al v. Obama et al last week and he showed up at the last hearing on the case— has been disbarred in California, as well as Florida and Texas. * * *

Meanwhile, the turd in the Republican Party's pocket keeps growing. This piece from Politico -- titled GOP Headache: The Birther Issue -- sums up the problem nicely in the wake of the Mike Castle town hall debacle:

[B]irthers say members should expect more of the same in the coming weeks. “Absolutely,” says California resident Orly Taitz, the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement. “It is a very important issue, one that politicians should have taken up a long time ago.”

Moments after speaking with POLITICO Saturday, Taitz posted a call to arms on her blog: “I believe it is a serious concern and I hope that each and every decent American comes to town hall meetings with a video camera and demands action,” she wrote.

Having seen his colleague Castle come under attack, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) is taking no chances. “Before I got back to Michigan before the break, we’ll go through it, so that we’re versed in it,” Hoekstra said recently. “Just like anything else, if you see a hot issue ... it’s sort of like, ‘Let me go take a look at this and see what the status is.’”

Hoekstra believes there’s no “compelling case” questioning Obama’s origins. But after talking to Castle about his town hall, he knows that he’d better be ready with an answer.

The trick: What do you say?

Of the various approaches a put-on-the-spot pol can take, each carries its own risk of alienating constituents. Pick up a pitchfork in the cause of this conspiracy theory, and you risk damaging your reputation in the mainstream while aligning yourself with a movement some regard as having racist undertones.

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), co-sponsor of legislation that would force candidates to show their birth certificates, was widely mocked after he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that Obama is a U.S. citizen — “as far as I know.”

However, members who decide to challenge the conspiracy theory, as Castle did mildly, risk ticking off a shrill minority who can upend their events and then post the video on the Web.

And those who try to split the difference may find themselves getting doubly burned. At a Wyoming town hall in April, birthers jumped on freshman Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis. “I’m not questioning your concern,” Lummis told the crowd, according to the Wyoming Eagle Tribune. “I am questioning whether there is credible evidence.” The congresswoman ended up asking for anyone who had “evidence” to send it to her.

At a walk-in meeting in Sen. Tom Coburn’s Washington office, birthers gave the Oklahoma Republican’s chief of staff nine pages of documentation in support of their claims. The group later billed the meeting a success on one of Taitz’s blogs. But when asked about the meeting, Coburn spokesman Don Tatro said that the office was simply trying to be “polite” and that “it is possible to mistake politeness for agreement.”

Of course, GOP Congressmen could easily handle this problem. When some whacko raises the issue at a town hall meeting, all they'd have to do call that person a complete nutjob and then move on. But this is something the Republicans cannot do, and that is why I find this story so freaking hilarious.

In fact, the Democrats should send operatives to GOP town hall meetings to make sure the birther issue is always raised. This is the greatest thing since the Republican Party's Terri Schiavo disaster.

UPDATE: It didn't take long for legendary idiot Jim Inhofe to step right into the pile of feces that is called the birther movement:

As you’ve already seen, Senator Jim Inhofe made a big splash today by telling the Politico that the birthers “have a point,” adding that he doesn’t “discourage” their movement.

But he’s now clarifying his claim, and blaming the White House for the persistence of birtherism. Inhofe now says that the birther point he was endorsing was specifically that the White House has not done a good enough job of rebutting the birthers’ charges.

Inhofe spokesman Jared Young sends me this new quote from Inhofe: “The point that they make is the Constitutional mandate that the U.S. President be a natural born citizen, and the White House has not done a very good job of dispelling the concerns of these citizens. My focus is on issues where I can make a difference to stop the liberal agenda being pushed by President Obama.”

My question to Inhofe is: Why would the White House want to do anything to "dispel the concerns" of a bunch of racist whackjobs who are causing you and other Obama enemies to repeatedly step on their own dicks?

By the way, this is hilarious.

The Upcoming Foundation Movies Will Be Directed By . . . Roland Emmerich?

From ComingSoon.net:

It's Day 3 of Comic-Con and ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with Roland Emmerich to talk about his new movie 2012. Before we wrapped up, we asked what was going on with Emmerich's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's sci-epic Foundation, and we learned that Oscar-nominated writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot) has been hired to adapt it.

"'Foundation' is my first attempt to do a series of movies, because we're developing three movies: 'Foundation,' 'Foundation and Empire' and 'Second Foundation,'" he told us. "It took me a long time to actually wait for the moment where the rights were totally free and we got them all, it's like 11 books, and we own the title 'Foundation' and also some of the robot novels and now we can really do these. I just hired a very good writer, the writer of 'Saving Private Ryan' who wrote 'The Patriot' for me and he's incredible. He is the most knowledgeable person I ever met about the 'Foundation' novels. It's great to write with somebody like that because there's no, 'I'll just look in the book and see what's there'... he knows it. I had a certain idea and he had a certain idea and that together I think will make this a movie." * * *

For those of you who've never heard of Roland Emmerich, he's the guy who directed Universal Soldier, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, so I'm having a hard time seeing a maker of summer-time popcorn flicks being able to effectively handle Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I hope he can pull it off, though, because I've been wanting these movies made since I was a kid.

This Sucks (With Update)

From Salon:

Seems like CNN executives have finally spoken up on Lou Dobbs' embrace of Birtherism. TVNewser is reporting that CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein e-mailed some of the staffers from Dobbs' show before it aired Thursday night to say, "[I]t seems this story is dead -- because anyone who is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef." * * *

I hope Lou Dobbs and his staff ignore Klein's e-mail and continue to run with the story, because this whole "Obama is an undocumented alien" movement is a giant turd in the GOP's pocket and I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon (and it won't go away if Lou Dobbs continues to speak out on it).

I for one hope the rumors that Obama was born in Kenya are true, because if they are, that means someone from Obama's camp traveled back in time to 1961 and planted Obama's birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which necessarily means that Obama has access to time travel technology, which would be really cool.

UPDATE: Yes! Klein leaves the door open for Dobbs to continue claiming that Obama is an illegal alien:

CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein told staffers of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Thursday that the controversy regarding the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate -- a topic Dobbs has avidly pursued on the air -- is a "dead" story.

But in an interview, the cable news chief left open the possibility that Dobbs may continue to raise questions about why the president has not produced a long-form birth certificate. The absence of such a record has spawned rumors that Obama was not born in the United States, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

"He's got more than 30 years as a television journalist, and I trust him, as I trust all our reporters and anchors, to exercise their judgment as various stories evolve," Klein said of Dobbs, whose daily CNN program is a mix of news and opinion.

That appeared to be a step back from the stance Klein took in his e-mail Thursday, in which he wrote that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials discarded paper documents in 2001. Because of that, Obama's long-form birth certificate no longer exists and a shorter certificate of live birth that has been made public is the official record, they reported. * * *

Hilarious

I'm really enjoying this whole deal. I just find it extremely funny that lots of right-wing types are sitting at home at this moment in a profound state of fury because they believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In other words, they are furious that the U.S. elected a Negro as president, but they just can't come out and say that, so they find other ways to express their racism (like this guy did here).

Watching that video of the woman going ape-shit over this the Obama birth certificate "conspiracy" . . . well, it literally reminded me of primates throwing their own shit around at the zoo. It's both troubling and hilarious.

Even Lou Throbbs is getting in on the shit-tossing.

And speaking of racism, this story reminds me of something out of the first Harold and Kumar movie.

Lawsuit Threatens Hobbit Movies

From Bloomberg:

J.R.R. Tolkien sold movie rights to his “Lord of the Rings” novels 40 years ago for 7.5 percent of future receipts. Three films and $6 billion later, his heirs say they haven’t seen a dime from Time Warner Inc.

The accounting methods used by New Line Cinema, the Time Warner unit that made the movies, will face a jury’s scrutiny in October, when the heirs’ lawsuit against the New York-based media company is set for trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The case, if not settled by then, may provide a window into accounting practices that let Time Warner deny proceeds of the Oscar-winning films to Tolkien’s heirs. The litigation also threatens to derail two “The Hobbit” films that, if their predecessors are a guide, could generate $4 billion in sales.

Tolkien’s family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, seek more than $220 million in compensation, according to Bonnie Eskenazi, an attorney with Greenberg Glusker, the Los Angeles firm representing the heirs. * * *

The Tolkiens also want the option to terminate further rights to the author’s work, as the original contract lets them do in the event of a breach, according to the complaint. News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers, which holds Tolkien’s publishing rights, is also a plaintiff. * * *

Sotomayor And Republican Racism

From Craig Crawford:

President Obama is free to go hard left with his next Supreme Court appointment. That's the lesson of the failed attacks on nominee Sonia Sotomayor during this week's Senate confirmation hearing.

Racially-tinged inferences, snide liberal bashing and the shameless pandering to anti-intellectual sentiment that once won the day for Republicans are now falling flat. The Sotomayor nomination has proved to be yet another test case for the efficacy of traditional conservative attack lines.

Republicans might have hoped to use this hearing to put limits on how far the President can safely go in picking liberals for future openings. Instead, they showcased just how narrow and out of touch their political base has become.

It is stunning that the GOP did not learn this lesson in the election of Barack Obama. Until Republicans get past calling 1-800-HATE there will be fewer and fewer voters on the other end of the line.

It's pretty clear to me, given how some of these GOP senators held out their racist mentality for all to see, that the Republicans used the Sotomayor hearings to actually promote racism. That's why the GOP allowed a good old boy like Jeff Sessions to run the show for them -- they knew Sotomayor would easily be confirmed, so why not use the hearings as an opportunity to throw some red meat at the 20% or so of the U.S. population that currently make up what's left of the Republican Party.

And I fully support such a strategy. The last thing I want the GOP to do is something that would actually expand the number of Republicans.

Palin/Sessions 2012!

The Time Has Come For Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III To Throw In The Towel

Senator Jeff Sessions is an idiot.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm sure he does a really good job when he presides over Klan meetings and such, but he seems to be having a hard time pulling his head out of his ass when it comes to the Sotomayor hearings.

Here is a comment Sessions made to Judge Sotomayor yesterday:

SESSIONS: You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.

Wow -- I guess if there was any doubts about Sessions being a racist, those doubts have now gone by the wayside. And this exchange was hilarious:

During his questioning, Sessions said he wished Sotomayor acted more like Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.” “My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor responded, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. For her part, Cedarbaum told the WSJ, “I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging.”

I know there is no way to keep racists out of the Senate, but prospective senators should at least be required to score over a 70 in an IQ test before being allowed to run. Is that too much to ask?

And by the way, I love this.

Quote Of The Century

"[Y]our idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn't investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office. That's ridiculous."

-- Blogger Marcy Wheeler on MSNBC yesterday, responding to the GOP suggestion that BushCo illegalities should not be investigated.

GOP Dicktitude On Full Display At Sotomayor Hearing (With Update)

From MSNBC:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Sotomayor, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed.

"And I don't think you will" have a meltdown, he added quickly as Sotomayor sat listening, her face in a half-smile.

It would have been great if Sotomayor responded, "Well, Senator, unless you start molesting young children, I'm certain your career will go just fine as well."

I know -- something like that would never happen, but I can dream, can't I?

Legendary racist -- and Alabama Senator -- Jeff Sessions couldn't resist coming off as a complete dick either:

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican, vowed a "respectful tone" and "maybe some disagreements" when lawmakers begin questioning Sotomayor on Tuesday.

Moments later, he took aim at Sotomayor's 2001 statement that her standing as a "wise Latina woman" would sometimes allow her to reach a better decision than a white male.

"I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision," he said.

"Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law," Sessions said. "In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom."

Maybe it is just me, but I think it is hilarious that Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III felt compelled to lecture a Latina woman about "prejudices."

UPDATE: From Matthew Yglesias:

I would pay good money to hear Sonia Sotomayor say, “Senator Sessions, I think it’s ironic to be facing these questions from a man whose judicial nomination was rejected by this very committee on the grounds that he’s a huge racist.” * * *

Seriously, though, when the Republican Senate Conference was meeting, did nobody say "if we're going to oppose the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, maybe we shouldn't have a giant racist leading the charge?" This seems like a situation in which Mel Martinez might have been able to offer a useful perspective. Or they could have called up JC Watts out of retirement. What were they thinking?

This Speaks Volumes

From Political Wire:

A new Pew Research report on American attitudes toward science finds that 55% of scientists identify as Democrats, while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

An Election Season That Keeps On Giving

From TPM:

The Minnesota Republican Party has tied off a remaining loose end from the epic, eight-month battle to determine a winner in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, sending Democratic Sen. Al Franken's campaign a check for almost $96,000 that was owed to him by Republican former Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign.

This had been the result of a trial-court judgement in early June, finding Coleman liable under the state's loser-pays provision for a small portion of the legal fees that Franken had piled up in the course of the election litigation. * * *