Liar: Right-wing talker Cunningham intellectually dishonest about use of Obama middle name

Bill Cunningham recently invoked the middle name of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in a pep talk given to a crowd attending a John McCain rally recently.

Not just once, of course. The scarcely-relevant talk show how blirted out "Hussein" at least three times in his tirade about Obama. The use of the term was perhaps the only memorable part of his stark-raving mad presentation, chock-full of innuendoes.

He then went on television Tuesday to defend his juvenile vitriol.

He was just using it as he would the middle name of any President--you know, Ronald Wilson Reagan, William Jefferson Clinton, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, etc.

Cunningham, of course, is lying.

Anyone with half a brain knows exactly what he is doing. He is sending out a signal to ignorant voters who might be turned off by Obama's Middle-Eastern middle name. He is playing to a false rumor that was circulated on the internet about Obama being a Muslim.

Eric Zorn wrote about Cunningham's tirade this way in the Chicago Tribune:

Obama doesn't use his middle name in his public life, and it's not necessary for anyone else to use it to distinguish him from other Barack Obamas.

The only reason to say "Barack Hussein Obama," as radio talk show host Bill Cunningham did repeatedly Tuesday in warming up a John McCain campaign rally in Cincinnati, is to try to excite anti-Muslim, anti-Arab prejudices (though Obama is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent) and not so subtly suggest that Obama's actually a slippery foreigner.

One cannot expect intellectual honesty from a non-intellecutal partisan like Cunningham. That being said, dredging up deep-seated xenophobia in the electorate is totally below board.

McCain repudiated Cunningham's use of the name, which spurred the half-wit talker to throw his support behind Hillary Clinton for president.

Yeah, you know: Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

You be the Judge: Cunningham in his own words...

‘Haskell’ humanitarian can fly, but not hide: Tanzanian cheers and jeers microcosm of Bush Legacy

A strange thing happened on day two of President Bush’s five-nation tour of Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Sunday.

Jeers were replaced by cheers; signs of Bush wearing a toothbrush mustache and jackboots were replaced by bold exclamations about American’s generous democracy.

According to one Reuters report, people were actually wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Bush’s face without that seemingly ubiquitous Alfred E. Neuman “what, me worry?” grin.

He actually looked presidential in the eyes of onlookers; at least, of course, until he attempted to articulate what he called a Swahili equivalent of a west Texas “Howdy y’all.”

Even so, Bush was lauded by Tanzanian President as being a friend to his country and to the continent as a whole.

It is true, of course, that Bush climbed into the coffers to dole out more monetary aid to Africa than any president in American history—even more than the so-called “first Black president,” Bill Clinton.

(Taking away any value judgments upon the sincerity of the transactions, I certainly would rather see my tax dollars being spent on water filtration systems and anti-Malarial bed nets in Africa than on infamous earmarks in Washington.)

Of course none of that matters to most Americans, who have an increasing tendency to greet President Bush with the ripest of raspberries.

Bush, it seems, is far less popular in the United States than in many parts of Africa, where nations have seen incidences of malaria and AIDS drop significantly since he became president in 2000.

Americans, it seems, are growing tired of war and are ticking nervously about an economy that’s been deemed in need of serious stimulation.

In truth, if the American people were sitting in the corner office, Africa’s problem would probably register around number 50 on the list of things to do.

Who can blame the American people for being a bit myopic these days? Bush has already spent this nation into late retirement with funds to fuel a war machine that produces ever-greater risks and ever-lesser rewards.

Bush’s reception in Tanzania is not simply emblematic of a grateful nation, but of one side of what will become a wholly disparate presidential legacy for the soon-to-be lame duck.

On the eve of his arrival in Tanzania, while so many geared up for a lovefest with their favorite humanitarian, a few thousand demonstrators crowed the streets of Dar es Salaam to protest Bush’s hawkish foreign policy.

Calling Bush a terrorist and burning American flags, a burgeoning crowd of mostly Muslim protestors aired their grievances against interventionist policies abroad—primarily Afghanistan and Iraq—as well as meddling in affairs close to home in Tanzania and Somalia.

Tanzanians, Muslim or not, know all to well the danger posed by global terrorism.

You should recall that in 1998 more Tanzanians than Americans lost their lives in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam. Further, Tanzanians also have a better understanding of what it is to live in tough economic times than the average American.

In this way Tanzanians are forced to take sides between what America can do for them and what America can do to them.

The lesson here is that no amount of frequent flyer miles or humanitarian aid can shield President Bush from the global affects of his disastrous foreign policy.

Apologists for the Bush Administration have argued that his generosity with our money is borne out of a genuine concern for the plight of the downtrodden in Africa, and not some ulterior motivation marked by transactions between unequals.

Perhaps, however, the nay-sayers have it right: Bush may just be panning for friends in a region of the world that does not totally despise America for what it has come to symbolize.

Either way, it is clear to me that Bush is nothing more than an Eddie Haskell humanitarian. His hand of friendship to Africa coupled with the thumbing of his nose at the rest of the world makes him of man of two minds, two philosophies and two legacies.

And it will only take you 8,000 miles to get to his good side.

A plead for the Second

From his hospital bed Todd Smith, the reporter who was injured in the recent city hall shootings in Kirkwood, Missouri, not-so-subtly attempted to throw his hat into the ring of political advocacy.

It was opportunistic advocacy at its finest.

“I feel like I want to become an advocate for gun control—that’s the problem,” said Smith, who will undergo surgery on his the hand that was pierced by the madman’s bullet, in an interview broadcast on MSNBC on Saturday.

This is the kind of knee-jerk stance on a hotly-contested issue that makes fans of the second amendment squirm.

And while I am certainly not here to defend the right of any citizen to bear a shoulder-fired missile, I am a somewhat reluctant defender of the second amendment—though not on the premise of the constitution’s infallibility.

When Charles Lee Thornton entered city hall with guns blazing, he did so with a mind possessed by fury and the intent to kill.

Smith was quoted in the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, dated today, about the nature of Thornton’s disposition upon entering the hall: "He was completely possessed," Smith said. "He just looked determined. He just shot the police officer without even a thought, and the guy just goes down."

That’s as good of a description of a maniacal killer as I’ve read—determination without forethought.

Inasmuch as Smith was able to aptly describe the demeanor of the killer at the time of the tragedy, he was far too hasty in his assessment of causation.

In truth, it was not Thornton’s access to a gun (or any weapon) that stimulated such mania as much as it was his physical and mental state at the up to the day of the shooting.

No amount of legislative coercion can prevent mentally deranged citizens from wreaking havoc on innocents if that is their desire.

What stopped Thornton in the end from the taking of more lives was not simple hopes and dreams, but a hail of gunfire from nearby law enforcement officers.

The overarching issue is demand, not supply.

The argument in play here, ironically, is similar to the one enlisted by many conservatives with respect to abortion.

For years many on the Right have argued unsuccessfully for a constitutional ban on abortion which is only a symptom of a larger problem: the desire to destroy the opportunity for life before conception.

Overturning settled law (Roe v. Wade in this case) would not magically take away the demand for abortions nor would further rescinding second amendment rights to law-abiding citizens put a stop to senseless violence.

The right to bear arms is not an unlimited good, but it is a right worth defending.

We live in a violent culture full of over-socialized people who, at their most extreme, will stop at nothing to right supposed wrongs and, at times, to use violence for its own sake.

Thornton and his ilk live neither in fear of the law or the gun. The best we can do as a society is to ensure that such people don’t have the choice.

The three trillion dollar man

The number jumped right off the page: $3,000,000,000,000.

That is the proposed budget which will be submitted by President Bush to Congress for approval this week.

Those were not the only characters jumping off the page, however.

Here's an excerpt from an article written by AP reporter Martin Crutsinger, dated today:

Bush, who was the first president to propose a $2 trillion budget, back in 2002, will leave office as the first president to hit $3 trillion with a spending plan. His blueprint for the budget year that begins next October projects huge deficits, around $400 billion for this year and next, more than double the 2007 deficit of $163 billion. Private economists believe the deficit could easily surpass the previous record in dollar terms of $413 billion set in 2004, especially if the country does go into a recession.

Just breathe that in, conservatives.

Bush, who has disavowed the principle of conservatism that matters most in government, fiscal responsibility, is officially the most reckless commander-in-chief in history with your money.

Take another breath…not FDR…not Lyndon Johnson.

George W. Bush presides over the largest government in American history.

Just six years separated the first EVER two trillion dollar budget and the first EVER three trillion dollar budget.

Six years.

Just in case you missed it the first time, sink it in by sounding it out: three, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.

As G. Gordon Liddy would say, that's three thousand billion.

The budget, which takes as a given deficits amounting to nearly half of a trillion dollars, is fairly typical for a neoconservative: cut worthless government programs and, instead of decreasing the size and scope of government, rolling those resources into the burgeoning national defense budget.

In this way, we can have more money to fight wars we cannot win and to add to a deficit that had been a surplus before Bush took the oath of office.

And while the Federal Reserve Board is doing its best to further devalue the dollar, mounting debt as a result of fiscal irresponsibility will only expedite the process.

The good old days of "war is good for business" are over

In an increasingly global economy, war can be a death blow for an economy. Consider that our Big Board, the NYSE, will nearly tank every time an Iranian dinghy gets within 200 yards of a US naval ship in international waters.

(Heck, the death of a populist in Pakistan set the market into a tailspin.)

And no "stimulus package" is going to make up for the excesses of the Bush administration's failed foreign and fiscal policies.

Tax cuts should not coincide with increases in spending.

The war in Iraq has been disastrous for the US economy, wreaking havoc on consumer confidence and turning over your money to the military-industrial complex that doesn't even give its fair share back.

The Party's over

The candidate Bush (circa 2000) would vehemently disagree with the President Bush, who is the worst kind of tax and spend liberal. He takes your money and invests it in a war machine guided by a foreign policy that hasn't made us safer since the end of the World War II.

At least the do-gooders might do something good with your money. When leftists like Ted Kennedy Barack Obama steal your money, they blow it with the best of intentions.

At least give us that.

Bush's $3,000,000,000,000 budget won't pass Congress without some serious tinkering, but you can rest assured that when it does pass it will not have gotten magically smaller.

Bush, whose conservative credentials are now officially null and void, will make concessions, but only in favor of more--and not less--government.

For those pundits who are quick to call a John McCain presidency the end of the Republican Party I have but one question: where have you been in the past eight years?

There is no party for fiscal conservatives anymore, and I can give you 3,000,000,000,000 reasons why.