Ed pimps a new book about Obama (The Manhcurian something or other), then drops this load:
I just received my copy of the book and will try to complete reading it before Aaron appears on The Ed Morrissey Show this week to discuss the book. The book follows the efforts of David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama (reviewed here) and Jerome Corsi’s Obama Nation. Both of those books shed light on Obama’s past political associations and efforts, but didn’t get as much traction as they deserved, thanks to a wave of popular support for Obama.
Yes. That Jerome Corsi. The birther. The 9/11 truther. Obama Nation was the book that was so riddled with falsehoods and outright lies that virtually everyone in the press mocked it, including Pete Wehner AND the National Review. Here is a 41 page dissection of Corsi’s lies (.pdf). Here is Ross Douthat. Here is Jon Henke.
There are few people with less credibility on any subject than Jerome Corsi. I guess Captain Ed is angling to be one of them.
In for a penny, in for a pound, eh, Ed? I knew I shouldn’t have taken a break from doing yard work.
licensed to kill time
Jerome Corsi has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.
Omnes Omnibus
@licensed to kill time: Didn’t Corsi first into prominence as a Swiftboater?
MattF
Both of those books claim to shed light on Obama’s past political associations and efforts, but didn’t get
asmuch tractionas they deserved, thanks to a wave of popular support for Obamabecause they were riddled with lies.Corrected.
Unabogie
And yet my Teabagging neighbor believed every word of Corsi’s book and couldn’t understand why I kept saying the book was full of bullshit.
Highlight of his book report, Obama’s “tribe” in Kenya was led by some despot named Odinga. And somehow Obama was going to help this guy because they were fellow tribesmen.
Or something.
You can’t even pre-mock this. It’s beyond the wingnut horizon.
licensed to kill time
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, to the general public. He’s been a frequent guest on Coast to Coast for years, though, spinning wild theories about the earth making its own oil and lots of other wacky stuff.
cleek
integrity is a luxury wingnuts can’t afford. don’t you know there’s a war (against their fellow countrymen) on ?
wrb
ot but the gulf is screwed.
The WSJ just reported that the spill may 5x larger.
I’m curious how this will affect public attitudes toward nuclear power.
Will they rush to it to get off oil or will they notice that just had a mighty demonstration of why we might question engineers’ assurances that they have designed a fail-safe system?
Mark S.
Corsi says you can’t trust drug users when they say they no longer use drugs. At least he’s consistent, because he was always saying that we couldn’t believe Bush when he said he no longer drank or used blow.
gbear
You’re supposed to reward yourself when you come in from doing yard work. You’re doing it wrong.
New Yorker
Isn’t Corsi also a 9/11 Truther?
Given the nutty right’s love of conspiracy theories, I know that the only reason it isn’t more popular is that Bush gets the blame. Had Al Gore been president, you can bet Rush Limbaugh would be spewing all the “collapsed in its footprint” and “fire doesn’t melt steel” talking points.
El Cid
Obama just wants us to go to Mars so his ancestors can smuggle back on our ships and take over with their Martian Muslim soshullism.
Someone who knows
Ah Yes. Ed Morrisey the Conservative who lives off of his blind wife’s medicare advantage.
Can you say hypocrisy? I knew you could!
Mark S.
@New Yorker:
Yeah, he is. I also found it interesting that John Hawkins, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt all think he’s a nut. Apparently, Capt Ed doesn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: Kenya is on Mars? Or is it Hawaii?
Someone who knows
Ah Yes, Ed Morrissey. The Conservative who lives off of his blind wife’s Medicare Advantage.
Can you say Hypocrite? I knew you could!
Heh…
Mark S.
@wrb:
The latter.
gbear
@wrb: Also from the WSJ:
The reason U.S. regulators don’t mandate the switch is because Dick Cheney dumped them when he had big oil write his energy policy. This spill will be Cheney’s legacy.
LuciaMia
Wasn’t Odinga, Kunta Kinte’s mother in “Roots?”
Corsi is also the dip who got kicked out of Kenya, after he arrived to try to dig up more dirt.
I remember him appearing on Fox, weaving this trip into some kind of hideous ordeal. He was held for 13 hours and they didn’t even offer him a sandwich!
Redhand
I’m glad to see “Assholes” included in this post’s tags. Special Ed has been full-metal-wingnut for so long now that it’s hard to remember his “serious conservative” days over at “Captain’s Quarters.”
licensed to kill time
__
Odinga is code for Mandingo in my book.
wrb
@gbear:
I read somewhere that requiring the acoustic switch was proposed and rejected in 2003. Isn’t that right about when Cheney was having his secret meetings with energy executives at the Naval Observatory?
geg6
Perhaps I’m mistaking Captain Ed for some other wingnut, but haven’t I seen John Cole semi-defend him here as he is a good guy under it all or something in the not too distant past? If I’m wrong, I aplogize for impugning you, John, but if I’m right, are you still feeling that at this point?
They are completely unhinged. I can’t believe anyone takes any of these people seriously.
wrb
@geg6:
Ed used to be often sane and responsible.
Some on the right reacted to being so wrong by Frumming, others seem to have just gone insane.
Ed is one of the latter.
Victor David Hanson is another. I admire some of his books on the Classical era (particularly the one on ancient Greek agriculture) but I find him unreadable now. Lies and distortions shot with 660 volts of seething rage.
24AheadDotCom
In a PDF that the BHO campaign released (probably the same as the one linked in the post), they selectively edited a Corsi quote to make him look bad ( 24ahead.com/blog/archives/007909.html ). Actually, it went beyond simply selective editing: they left a whole interior sentence out of a paragraph, without indicating in any way that they’d omitted that sentence. Many regimes around the world would be proud.
As for Jon Henke, see the link.
Omnes Omnibus
@wrb: I think there is a point for these people where they have to choose between political belief and intellectual integrity. You see some struggle with the choice for a while and then they come out, more or less, in favor of one or the other. Others simply shed their integrity like a dirty shirt.
aimai
At 24dotheadwhatever thingy person.
You know who hated ellipses? Hitler, that’s who.
aimai
Svensker
@gbear:
Do you have a link for that?
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: No, that was Gypsies.
bobbob
It doesn’t matter how big the lie is. People believe what they want to believe. If it fits the pre-conceived notion they already have about the Kenyan Usurper they will gobble it up and spit it out to all their friends and relatives. And on and on it goes.
Americanadian
Clearly God is punishing us all for your insufficient Puritan Work Ethic.
wrb
@Svensker:
For the timing at least
Here
Comrade Kevin
Swell, Lone Wacko has shown up.
Svensker
@wrb:
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. They certainly saved a bunch of money not having those switches on, didn’t they?
Oddly enough, I don’t blame industry types that much. People will always try to cut corners, figuring that THEY’RE not gonna be the ones with the problem. Which is why you NEED regulations, so the natural human tendency to assume your own actions will have only good consequences can be curbed and reality can be accounted for.
Dave C
Speaking of assholes, the National Enquirer is now reporting that Obama had a clandestine affair with one of his campaign aides. I already have a friend on facebook harping about it. Expect this to produce the next wingnut meltdown.
licensed to kill time
@wrb:
I heard a report on CNN international last night about these acoustic switches. I believe said they cost about $500,000, which seems like a bargain at this point. So this is another edition of “Pennywise, Poundfoolish”, brought to you by the Great Free Market and The Invisible Hand. They don’t need no stinkin’ regulations!
wrb
@Svensker:
The switches cost $500,000. BP was renting the rig for $500,000/day.
I agree with regard to regulation.
The message that this has the same root cause as the financial meltdown should be pounded home hard.
Comrade Mary
$500,000? That’s what the average freshly graduated tween at Goldman Sachs earns during his coffee break.
Hey, I know how to stop up that broken well. Bundle Masters of the Universe into cylinders of a dozen or so and pack them in there nice and firm. Tell them they’ll get paid as much as the average landscape gardener or teacher for the work. I’m sure they’ll jump at the opportunity to bring true value to this economy.
(And now I can’t get rid of the vision of a legion of squalling Wall Street WATBs as the world’s largest buttplug. Good God, I’ve squicked myself something fierce.)
Martin
@Svensker: This is why you need lawyers, actually. If you’re going to accept that industry will cut corners, then you need to embrace lawyers suing the fuck out of people to make those corners more expensive to keep in than to cut off.
But there’s no excuse in this case. I virtually guarantee that the engineers who designed the rig argued strongly for the added safety valve. They’d know full well the risk/reward in this situation, that *one* spill from *one* deepwater rig in the Gulf would pay for the installation and maintenance of that valve on every rig on Earth. The engineers would have almost certainly made this argument. Shortsighted doesn’t even begin to describe it.
OTOH, how could they know that Obama’s eco-nazi SWAT team would team up with Greenpeace to blow up the rig. Amirite?
Mike in NC
@wrb:
AKA Victor Davis Handjob for his enthusiasm for all things wingnut. Lost his mind post-9/11 and threw in his lot with the neocon movement. He’s been published in the American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, National Review, etc. Solid right-wing credentials.
A recent title of his is “How The Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security”. Part of a series by something called Encounter Broadsides. I read the guy is a great fan of Dick Cheney, and wasn’t Hanson an advisor to McCain/Palin in 2008?
Svensker
@Comrade Mary:
This is an idea I could get behind.
cleek
@24AheadDotCom:
sweeeeeet! one of Yglesias’ long-time trolls has showed up!
welcome to the pie factory, troll.
Mike in NC
@Dave C:
I think the latest wingnut meltdown is over the Obama administration’s stealth plan to impose the European-style Value Added Tax (VAT) on an unsuspecting America, even though nobody has ever proposed such a thing. Every tea party and anti-tax nut is all over it. They usually refer to it as the “VAT Tax”. Can’t wait to see the bumper stickers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: VAT tax? Value added tax tax? Obama is going to tax our taxes? Aiiieeeee!
wrb
@Dave C:
That story has been out there since 2008. When No Quarter got tired of talking about the Whitey Tape they would talk about Vera Baker.
The Daily Mail reported on it at the time.
Curious that they would try to revive it now.
David
Corsi is a charlatan. Had he lived in the Old West, he’d be tarred and feathered and run out of town.
cleek
@wrb:
it’s not so curious if you assume they’ll try things that worked in the past.
Dave C
@wrb:
huh. I must have missed that or forgotten about it. In any case, I just have this feeling that there are going to be thousands of teabaggers clinging to their copies of the Enquirer, shouting, “John Edwards! John Edwards! John Edwards!” while demanding that the MSM treat this like a serious story.
Kirk Spencer
@wrb: No, I never found Ed to be sane and reasonable. He has always had a habit of revising history and current events to match his opinions. He’s just gotten worse over time.
Mnemosyne
@wrb:
Like cleek said, they’re getting ready to party like it’s 1994 if they win big in the midterms, so they’re rounding up their greatest hits. Expect to start hearing the dark whispers about Rezko show up next even though they were debunked four years ago.
wrb
More breaking spill news
Martin
@wrb:
Break out the foam fingers! Woo! We’re #1!
Wait, we were #1 before! Do we sweep the podium?!
Stroszek
So is this retroactively true now?
sneezy
@wrb:
“a mighty demonstration of why we might question engineers’ assurances that they have designed a fail-safe system?”
I wouldn’t be overly quick to blame engineers for this.
“…the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely…”
“…of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval.”
It sounds to me as if BP management went around engineering when they could and failed to implement the engineers’ recommendations properly when they couldn’t.
Never attribute to poor engineering that which can be explained by corrupt and incompetent management.
http://pacificfreepress.com/news/1/6112-wearing-it-bp-in-deep.html
Tip Top
In the linked piece, author Aaaron Klein is quoted about about his new book saying Obama was involved with “the Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and black political extremists…”
Not only were they “political extremists,” but they were “black political extremists.” That’s like super worse.
Peter J
No Bailout for BP, bleed them dry. Nationalize their assets and use them to pay for the spill. If the British won’t give them up, invade.
Dr. Squid
Jerome Corsi’s a bit busy shilling for boy bumpers in the RC Church while accusing everyone outside it of being one.
Nutella
@Peter J:
If Britain can get Iceland to pay them back for banking losses, surely we can get Britain to pay us back for the damage to the Gulf?
One thing to note about the $500,000 for the shut off switch: BP would have had to pay all of that with their own money. The very expensive damage to the Gulf and attempts to ameliorate it will be almost 100% borne by the federal taxpayers, local governments, the local economy that depends on fishing, shipping, and tourism, and all the plants and animals (including humans) in the path of the oil slick. BP will get off with a small fine, much less than the $500,000 they saved and a million times less than the cost of the damage they caused. Their duty to stockholders will be given as justification.
maus
@David: Charlatans no longer get run out of any town. They find a supportive community online and strengthen the beliefs of their followers. Hell, alt-med quacks used to get arrested, now they’re above the law aside from the occasional negligent homicide, like the “the Secret” dude that killed all those people in a sweatlodge.
AxelFoley
@LuciaMia:
ROFL!
Keith G
Wow. Composting for the OCD crowd.
stickler
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually, referring to the VAT as “Value Added Tax Tax” isn’t as ridiculous as it may seem. One of the chief criticisms of the tax is that it’s applied at every stage of adding value to a product so hits items over and over and over. Probably not the worst way to raise revenue ever invented, but sneaky and sticky nonetheless.
Not that your average wingnut even knows what “VAT” stands for in any case.
timb
@wrb: and how much didmExxon end up paying for the Valdez? These lawsuits won’t save the environment, but they are gonna really hurt BP’s bottom line. They may not be able to afford to overthrow the Nigerian government in the near future!
Scott de B.
That’s awfully pessimistic there. The Exxon Valdez spill case is still in litigation (the Supreme Court recently said the $2.5 billion judgment against Exxon was excessive and has remanded it; the legal limit under the decision is around $500 million, but Exxon has claimed to have spent and additional $2 billion on cleanup. Who knows if that’s accurate, but the total is far, far above $500,000.
But that extra tax only applies to the added value. If I increase the value of a product from $8 to $10, I pay VAT on the $2. Someone else already paid the VAT on the other $8.