Bill Maher | May 15, 2009 | Part Three
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Bill Maher | May 15, 2009 | Part Two
Abu-Ghraib, Cheney, G.O.P., George W. Bush, Pelosi, Politics, Torture, TullycastBill Maher | May 15, 2009 | Part One
Abu-Ghraib, Cheney, G.O.P., George W. Bush, Pelosi, Politics, Torture, TullycastBill Maher | May 15, 2009 | Opening Monologue
Abu-Ghraib, Cheney, G.O.P., George W. Bush, Pelosi, Politics, Torture, TullycastYour Country is Not Coming Back to You; She's Found Somebody New – And It's a Black Guy
Barack Obama, Dijon, Douchebags, G.O.P., Grey Poupon, John Kerry, MSNBC, Mustard, Ray's Hell, Recession, Republicans, Sean Hannity, Swine Flu, White House Correspondents DinnerAmid recession, two wars and swine flu, conservatives assail Obama over Dijon
WASHINGTON — The United States is in the midst of a devastating recession, mired in two overseas wars and grappling with a swine flu outbreak, but conservative critics are assailing President Barack Obama on another pressing issue: his choice of burger topping.
Dijongate is in full force, with Fox News and a conservative blogger leading the charge against the president for his choice of the apparently un-American mustard atop his cheeseburger during a recent impromptu lunch stop with Vice-President Joe Biden.
There’s no evidence of wiretapped hotel rooms or a Deep Throat lurking in the shadows, but there are indeed accusations of a coverup – MSNBC, apparently, edited out the president’s request for Dijon in order to help Obama maintain his “man of the people” street cred.
Fox’s Sean Hannity has been telling his viewers that MSNBC – and reporter Andrea Mitchell in particular – are trying to hide Obama’s Dijon-loving ways from the public.
Hannity has been referring to the president’s lunch as his “fancy burger.”
“It was Grey Poupon, which is equally snotty,” alleged one commenter on Hannity’s website.
William Jacobson, a Cornell law school professor who has also been blogging about Dijongate, noted that Mitchell “didn’t mention one arugula-like fact” about Obama’s order earlier this week at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Va.
Jacobson said the MSNBC video of the stop at Ray’s cuts out just as Obama asks for Dijon. He refers to MSNBC as “Obama’s favourite network.”
“MSNBC edited out the audio when Obama ordered his Hell Burger just at the moment when Obama asked for Dijon mustard,” Jacobson wrote in a Thursday post entitled “Thou Shalt Not Mock Obama’s Mustard.”
“Now, I have nothing against Dijon mustard, but the image didn’t fit with the image being spun by the White House and MSNBC. Dijon mustard on a Hell Burger had a very John Kerry-ish quality about it.”
Jacobson blogged about other incidents in which Obama has revealed his weakness for the spicy French condiment.
It’s a key ingredient, for example, in the president’s favourite tuna salad, and he also had the gall to request it during his first trip on Air Force One.
“And the mainstream media didn’t cover it,” Jacobson wrote.
It all hearkens back to those silly days of “freedom fries,” the name given to French fries by hawkish conservatives in 2003 when France expressed strong opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The French stance resulted in a call from American right-wingers for a boycott of French goods and the removal of the country’s name from products. That left America’s best-selling mustard – French’s – in a bit of a quandary.
French’s, in fact, figures prominently in a Dijon-related anecdote Obama himself chronicled in his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
He told the story of his first tour through Illinois, when he ordered Dijon on his cheeseburger at a TGI Friday’s.
His panicked political aide assured the waitress that Obama didn’t want Dijon at all and waved her away, thrusting a bottle of French’s at him instead. The waitress, perplexed, assured Obama that she had Dijon if he wanted it.
“As the waitress walked away, I leaned over and whispered that I didn’t think there were any photographers around,” Obama wrote.
The anecdote underscored Obama’s thoughts on what he viewed as the absurdity of focusing on non-issues in politics.
“What’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics-the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial,” he wrote.
One commenter on Jacobson’s blog mocked Dijongate on Thursday: “Wait till the right finds out he eats guacamole, then he’ll be seen as a pro-immigrant nut job. God forbid he ever takes a bite of hummus!”
Jacobson, however, insists that alleged efforts to cover up Obama’s choice of mustard this week are newsworthy.
“I don’t think anyone is ‘upset’ with his choice of mustard, although that is how some are spinning it,” Jacobson said in an e-mail. “It is the absurd level of image control, which is not trivial.”
Nonetheless, some of the right’s attacks on Obama have bordered on the inane, subjecting conservatives to ridicule.
Comedian Bill Maher, a longtime libertarian, recently maligned the right and their fixation on the trivial in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times.
“Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law,” Maher wrote.
“And here’s the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a TelePrompTer too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.”
Conservatives, Maher wrote, are now behaving like “the bitter divorced guy whose country has left him – obsessing over it, haranguing it, blubbering one minute about how much you love it and vowing the next that if you cannot have it, nobody will,” he wrote.
“But … your country is not coming back to you. She’s found somebody new. And it’s a black guy.”
Arlen Specter Blames Republican Policies For Jack Kemp's Cancer Death
Arlen Specter, Cancer, GOP, Jack Kemp, Republican PartyStay Classy, Washington Times
Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, said part of the reason that he left the Republican Party last week was disillusionment with its health-care priorities, and suggested that had the Republicans taken a more moderate track, Jack Kemp may have won his battle with cancer.
Mr. Specter, responding to a question from CBS’ Bob Schieffer over whether he had let down Pennsylvanians who wanted a Republican to represent them, said he thought his priorities were more in line with those of the Democrats.
“Well, I was sorry to disappoint many people. Frankly, I was disappointed that the Republican Party didn’t want me as their candidate,” Mr. Specter said on “Face the Nation.” “But as a matter of principle, I’m becoming much more comfortable with the Democrats’ approach. And one of the items that I’m working on, Bob, is funding for medical research.”
Mr. Specter continued: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”
Mr. Kemp died Saturday of cancer. He had been the running mate of 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole
Noam Chomsky Steals William F. Buckley's Lunch and Then Eats It
Conservatives, Liberals, Noam Chomsky, Politics, William F. BuckleyPart Two
Taking Stock Of The Claims Against Michael Steele
StoriesSteele Trap? Taking Stock Of The Claims Against The New RNC Chief
So what to make of the allegation against newly elected GOP chairman Michael Steele, that his 2006 Senate campaign made payments to a company run by his sister, for work that was never performed?
It’s not yet clear. The claim comes from a court filing made last March by Alan Fabian — Steele’s finance chair during that campaign — who was facing unrelated fraud charges and hoped, in vain, to get credit for cooperation. In the end, Fabian was sentenced to nine years in jail for swindling millions from businesses and banks.
So there’s reason to be skeptical.
But there isn’t reason to dismiss the claim out of hand. For one thing, the Feds appear to be taking it seriously: Agents have spoken to Steele’s sister about the issue, according to a Steele spokesman.
Steele told ABC’s This Week that the FBI is “winding this thing down” but didn’t explain how he knew that. And although Steele added that the payments were for legitimate work, the explanations from his camp don’t yet add up.
At issue is a February 2007 payment of more than $37,000 made by Steele’s unsuccessful Senate campaign to Brown Sugar Unlimited, a company run by Monica Turner, Steele’s sister (and also the former Mrs. Mike Tyson, incidentally).
According to campaign finance records, reports the Post, the payments were for “catering/web services.” But a Steele spokesman told the paper that Turner “did a lot of media stuff” for the campaign. The spokesman then showed the paper an invoice for catering services for two events. But the invoice was dated December 2006, although the events occurred in October 2006 and July 2007. The spokesman attributed this to a typo.
So, was it media, web services, or catering? How many companies do all three?
There’s also the fact that, as the Post reports, “Turner filed papers to dissolve the company 11 months before the payment was received”. (Steele told ABC yesterday that Turner believed the company was still in existence when the payments were made.)
The payments to Turner aren’t the only allegations Fabian is making against Steele. There are three additional — and apparently less serious — claims.
One is that Steele, who at the time was Maryland’s lieutenant-governor, used his state campaign to pay bills invoiced to his 2006 Senate campaign for printing services, totaling around $38,000 — which would violate campaign finance law. Steele’s spokesman says the printing was related to Steele’s lieutenant governor’s office.
Another claim is that Steele paid $75,000 from the state campaign to the law firm of Baker Hostetler, for work that was never performed. The payment was listed in campaign finance records as an in-kind contribution to the state GOP. And a lawyer for Baker Hostetler — who was also chief counsel for the RNC — told the Post that the payment was for legal work on challenging Maryland’s 2002 legislative redistricting.
Finally, Fabian claims that Steele or an aide transferred more than $500,000 in campaign cash from one bank to another without appropriate authorization. The bank transfer appears to have angered aides to former Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich, who had hoped to use the money for other states races, including Ehrlich’s. But there doesn’t appear to be evidence that it was illegal.
There’s also no evidence that the Feds are looking into any of these latter three claims.
So it’s those payments to Steele’s sister’s company that appear to be where the action is. And until we get a fuller explanation of what those payments were really for, this story will probably linger.
That can’t be a prospect that will please a Republican Party that just made Steele its major national spokesman
The New York Herald Sun 