The Holiday the World Celebrates Each Year on the 25th of December Is Actually Tens of Thousands of Years Older Than Christianity Itself, So It’s Foolish For Christian Conservatives to Say That This Holiday Is For Christians Only When Almost Everything Associated With It Has Nothing to Do With the Birth of Jesus — and It’s Celebrated by Billions of Non-Christians Around the World

When we think of Christmas, images of Santa Claus, Christmas trees and wrapped-up gifts often come to mind. For devout Christians, the Nativity scene depicting the birth of Jesus comes first. But the truth is that the celebration of the birth of Jesus is a relatively recent addition to the late-December festival of the winter solstice, the most ancient holiday in the world — tens of thousands of years older than Christianity itself — and is one of the two major Pagan festivals that has survived largely intact in the Western world. The other is Halloween. (Image courtesy MySpace.com)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. Monday, December 21, 2009)

DEAR READERS: It’s that most wonderful time of the year again. And following a tradition started by the late advice columnist Ann Landers in 1956 to republish an updated version of her Christmas column each year, it is with great pleasure that I present the 2009 edition of my annual holiday article, “The Pagan Roots of Christmas.” Next Monday, December 28, I will present my third annual ‘Skeeter Bites Awards — “dishonors,” in the tradition of the Razzie Awards to the worst films of the year — to the people who in the past year have done more to bring misery to the lives of millions than anyone else. Enjoy this week’s article — and may your holidays be filled with joy, peace and love. Blessed Be and Happy Holidays.

By SKEETER SANDERS

(Original version published December 18, 2005)

Ah, December.

‘Tis the season when most of us are thinking about opening gifts under brightly lighted trees. Of kissing someone special under the mistletoe. Of eating, drinking and making merry. And, above all, of hoping for peace on Earth and goodwill to all.

But in 2009, on what ought to be the most festive time of the year — even in the face of the toughest economic climate in nearly 30 years — “goodwill to all” again appears to be in short supply in America among certain people, who continue to rail against what they perceive as a so-called “War on Christmas” because of what appears to be a lessening in recent years of the Christian symbolism of the holiday.

Once again, Americans appear locked in a conflict pitting Christian conservatives determined to preserve what they say are the use of Christmas symbols and traditions against secularists who argue that for government agencies to do so is a violation of the constitutional ban on government endorsement of any particular religion — in this case, Christianity.

FIGHT ON CAPITOL HILL OVER CHRISTMAS ERUPTS ANEW

And once again, the battle was being waged in the halls of Congress. Representative Henry Brown (R-South Carolina) earlier this month introduced a resolution calling on his House colleagues to express support for the use of Christmas trees, wreaths and other symbols of the holiday and to oppose any attempt to ban them.

“Each year, I could see a diminishing value of the spiritual part of Christmas,” Brown said in an interview with CNN. “It would seem like another group would go from the Christmas spirit to the holiday spirit. What I’m afraid of — if we don’t bring some kind of closure to this continuous change, then in 20 years it will almost be completely different from what we see today … and so we would lose the whole emphasis of what the very early beginnings of Christmas was all about.”

To date, Brown’s resolution has 73 co-sponsors — all but one of them Republicans. The House has adopted similar resolutions in years past when it was controlled by Republicans, but with the Democrats now in charge, the lawmakers this year departed Washington for their holiday recess without taking it up.

And as far as the Reverend Barry Lynn is concerned, that’s a good thing.

Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the resolution reflects “this bizarre view by some members of Congress that there is a war on Christmas and that they have to be the generals in some responding army.”

Lynn told CNN that he doesn’t have a problem with members of Congress promoting religion privately as individuals, but that they shouldn’t violate the First Amendment’s Establishment of Religion Clause by acting in their official capacity on Capitol Hill “trying to ‘help’ the baby Jesus by passing a resolution on his behalf. It is arrogant and ridiculous at the same time.”

He lamented that some people feel a “false sense of some kind of attack on Christmas” if a school holds a winter concert instead of a Christmas concert, or if retailers declare “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

O’REILLY STILL RAILING AGAINST SO-CALLED ‘WAR ON CHRISTMAS’

Tell that to Bill O’Reilly. The acerbic Fox News Channel talk-show host has been raising hell about a so-called “War on Christmas” for more than five years.

“All over the country, Christmas is taking flak,” O’Reilly said in a Christmas Eve 2004 broadcast of his “O’Reilly Factor” program. “In Denver . . . no religious floats were permitted in the holiday parade there. In New York City, Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg unveiled the “holiday tree,” and no Christian Christmas symbols are allowed in the public schools. Federated Department Stores — that’s Macy’s — have done away with the Christmas greeting “Merry Christmas.”

O’Reilly goes on: “Now most people, of course, love Christmas and want to keep its traditions, but the secular movement has influence in the media, among some judges and politicians. Americans will lose their country if they don’t begin to take action. Any assault on Judeo-Christian philosophy should be fought.”

Baloney. There is no such assault going on. On the contrary, what is happening is a growing recognition of America’s religious and spiritual diversity.

The thought has apparently never occurred to O’Reilly and other Christian conservatives that there are literally millions of Americans who are not Christian and have December holidays of their own. Why should Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Yule not get the recognition they richly deserve?

Why should those holidays be ignored or subsumed under Christmas? And contrary to what O’Reilly and other Christian conservatives say, Christmas is not a strictly Christian religious holiday in the first place. It’s celebrated by billions of non-Christians around the world and is a public holiday even in countries where Christians are a small minority.

THE HISTORICAL TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTMAS

Christmas has never been — and will never be — a Christian-only celebration and the time has come for Christian conservatives to stop denying the holiday’s true origins, for it didn’t start with the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. The truth is, the holiday the world celebrates each year on the 25th of December pre-dates the birth of Jesus by tens of thousands of years.

Indeed, it is the most ancient holiday on the planet.

What we now call Christmas is actually the Christian adaptation of the many millennia-old Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. With the notable exception of the Nativity creche, all of the symbols and decorations that we associate today with Christmas — the tree, the wreath, the holly and the ivy, the lights, the mistletoe, the eggnog, the Yule log, the caroling and even Santa Claus — are of Pagan origin and have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

Indeed, the very word “Christmas,” with its direct reference to Jesus as “The Christ” — which is derived from the Greek word kristos, or “savior” — is almost exclusive to English-speakers. In only nine other languages — Dutch (Kerstfeest), Farsi (Cristmas-e-shoma), French (Noel), Greek (Kristouyenna), Indonesian (Natal), Italian (Natale), Portugese (Natal), Spanish (Navidad) and Ukranian(Khrystouvym) — does the name of this holiday come even close to referring to the birth of the Christ child.

Many Americans often refer to Christmas as “the Yuletide.” And no wonder: Yule is the winter solstice. Most modern Pagans still celebrate Yule. Even most Christians use “Christmas” and “Yule” interchangeably to describe the season without even thinking about its Pagan origins.

Yule — which this year is today (Monday) — celebrates the beginning of the sun’s light and warmth returning to the northern hemisphere after reaching its southernmost point on the Earth at the Tropic of Capricorn on the winter solstice.

It is one of the two very ancient Pagan holidays that are still widely celebrated in the Western world — and beyond — relatively intact. The other is our modern celebration of Halloween.

[In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is obliged to state for the record that I, a former Roman Catholic, am a Pagan; more specifically, a Wiccan. Yule has special significance for me personally, especially this year; today marks the 25th anniversary of my conversion in 1984 to Wicca, the largest and best-known “denomination” of modern Western Paganism.]

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE

If you really want to be historically accurate, then the Christmas tree should rightly be called the Yule tree, for it dates back nearly 5,000 years to the Celtic Druids. They revered evergreens as manifestations of deity because they did not “die” from year to year, but stayed green and alive when other plants appeared dead and bare. The trees represented everlasting life and hope for the return of spring.

Best known today for their celebrations of the summer solstice in June at Stonehenge, the Druids decorated their trees for the winter solstice in December with symbols of prosperity: a fruitful harvest, coins for wealth and various charms such as those for love or fertility.

Scandinavian Pagans, particularly the Norse, became the first to bring their decorated trees indoors, as this provided a warm and welcoming environment for the native fairy folk to join in the festivities.

The Saxons, a Pagan tribe from what is now Germany, were the first to place lights on the their trees in the form of candles (an extremely dangerous fire hazard by today’s standards). For centuries, the ancient Romans decorated their homes with evergreens at the winter solstice festival of Saturnalia — which also marked the Roman New Year — and exchanged evergreen branches with friends as a sign of good luck.

Christians’ use of the tree symbol for the December holidays did not begin until the 16th century, when devout Catholics in what is now Italy brought decorated trees into their homes. The German-born Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, is credited with starting the tradition in England in 1841 when he brought the first Christmas tree into Windsor Castle.

THE EIGHT PAGAN HOLIDAYS

Nature’s cycles of winter, spring, summer and fall (and everything else in between) are so much a part of human life and society on Earth that to acknowledge, celebrate and even sanctify those cycles is a primal need we simply cannot ignore. Just ask any ski-resort operator in winter or swimming-pool operator in summer — or any farmer, for that matter.

Yet those who follow the world’s three great monotheistic religions — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — have long been reluctant to do so and instead instituted their own rituals, holy days and festivals. The fact that many of the major Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays — and even some civic and national holidays — often occur in tandem with the eight major Pagan holidays during the course of the year is no accident.

In addition to the winter solstice celebration of Yule on December 20-22 (depending on the actual date of the solstice itself from one year to the next), the other seven Pagan holidays are:

• Imbolg or Candlemas (Groundhog Day, February 2) — also known among Catholics as St. Brigid’s Day;

• Eostre or Ostara (Spring Equinox, March 20-22);

• Beltaine (May Day, May 1);

• Litha (Summer Solstice, June 20-22);

• Lammas or Lughnasadh (Midsummer’s Day, August 1);

• Mabon (Autumn Equinox, September 20-22);

• Samhain (pronounced SOW-en), the Wiccan New Year (Halloween, October 31).

This is why Easter (whose name in English is a derivative of Eostre) always falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. And why Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, almost always falls near the autumn equinox.

Jews transformed the three ancient harvest festivals of the Canaanites into the three festivals of Creation (Tabernacles), Revelation (Pentecost), and Redemption (Passover). Likewise, Christians and Muslims transformed their ancient, Nature-based festivals into celebrations of the singular events in, respectively, the life of Jesus and the career of the Prophet Mohammed.

HOW AN ANCIENT ROMAN HOLIDAY BECAME CHRISTMAS

After Christianity was proclaimed the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine in 312 C.E. (Common Era), the early Christian church — now the Vatican — used the transformation of the ancient holidays and festivals as a tool to convert Pagans to Christianity throughout the empire and beyond.

Yet the church barred Christians from holding any kind of celebration to honor the birth of Jesus, primarily because the actual date of his birth was unknown — and remains unknown to this day, although there is some astronomical and archaeological evidence suggesting that Jesus was actually born in the spring.

The church’s ban was lifted in 350 C.E., when Pope Julius I proclaimed a feast day to celebrate Jesus’ birth — and deliberately chose December 25 as the date to hold “Christ’s Mass” to absorb and Christianize not only Yule, but also Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.

Saturnalia was celebrated with feasting, gift-giving and role-reversal between men and women and between slaves and their masters. It was also marked by the unabashed enjoyment of sensual and erotic pleasures, which many conservative Christians today strongly condemn as wanton debauchery, but still survives in our time (primarily around New Year’s Eve).

And because Saturnalia also marked the Roman New Year under the Julian calendar, the changeover to the present-day Gregorian calendar in 1582 resulted in the one-week interval between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Upper-class Romans also celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the sun god, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For them, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year — especially since the daylight from the sun began to lengthen on the 25th, following the winter solstice.

CHRISTIANITY VS. PAGANISM

The current debate in the United States over “Christmas” versus “Holiday” trees, decorations and greetings is part of a much deeper clash of cultures that has gone on for centuries: Christianity vs. Paganism.

Paganism is pantheistic and circular; Christianity is monotheistic and linear. Pagans celebrate the eternal natural cycle of being. Christians venerate the linear concept of progress, from creation to ultimate redemption.

Pagans live in the realm of the eternal recurrence. Pagan rites maintain harmonious relationships among the gods; thus, these rituals guarantee the continuity of Nature’s cycles, which Nature-based human societies depend on for their sustenance.

Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) worship the God who created all natural things and stands above them. To them, when God intervenes in the world, it is not to create a disruption of natural events, but rather to generate some wonderful new direction in human affairs.

It is at the winter solstice — more so than at any other time of the year — that people of Judeo/Christian/Muslim faith feel most acutely the tension between the origins of their religion in Pagan Nature worship on the one hand and the evolution of their faith into belief in a single God and a linear remembrance of historical events and teachings on the other.

SURVEY REVEALS AMERICA’S GROWING RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

And for many conservative Christians in particular, that tension could only have grown sharper in recent years as the number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian has been growing sharply since 1990, according to data compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), a private poll conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Posen Foundation.

The U.S. Census Bureau is constitutionally barred from directly compiling data on the religious affiliations of Americans, thus the ARIS survey — the third conducted by Trinity College since 1990 — is considered authoritative.

The latest ARIS survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of 2008 and released in March of this year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Christians — inclusive of all its denominations — has fallen to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990.

Those who do call themselves Christian are more frequently describing themselves as “nondenominational” “evangelical” or “born again.” Significantly, the ARIS survey found, this increase corresponds strongly with a dramatic decline in the number of Americans who identify themselves as so-called “mainline” Protestants — particularly Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians — which fell from 17 million in 1990 to only five million today.

A SHARP RISE IN ‘SPIRITUAL, BUT NOT RELIGIOUS’ AMERICANS — ESPECIALLY IN NEW ENGLAND

At the same time, the ARIS survey found the proportion of Americans who declined to state any religious affiliation has skyrocketed, from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent today, with the vast majority of this group identifying themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”

This group is most heavily concentrated in northern New England and the Pacific Northwest. Vermont leads all other states in this category by a full nine percentage points, with a record-high 34 percent of its residents identifying themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”

Out of a total U.S. adult population of 175.4 million people who professed a religious or spiritual belief system in the first ARIS poll in 1990, 151.4 million, or roughly 85 percent, identified themselves as Christian.

In the second ARIS survey in 2001, 159.5 million out of a total 207.9 million believers — 76 percent — identified themselves as Christian.

Now, out of a total U.S. adult population of 228 million believers, 173.4 million identified themselves as Christian, unchanged in percentage terms from the 76 percent the ARIS survey found in 2001.

A SHIFT IN ROMAN CATHOLIC POPULATION TO THE SOUTHWEST

The 2009 ARIS survey notes that America’s religious geography — particularly of the nation’s 57.2 million Roman Catholics — has been transformed since 1990. “Religious switching along with Hispanic immigration has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions,” the survey’s principal authors, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, reported.

“Between 1990 and 2008, the Catholic population proportion of the New England states fell from 50 percent to 36 percent and in New York state, it fell from 44 percent to 37 percent, while it rose in California from 29 percent to 37 percent and in Texas from 23 percent to 32 percent.”

BAPTISTS, MORMONS, MUSLIMS AND PAGANS UP; BUDDHISTS, HINDUS DOWN; JEWS HOLD STEADY

Other key findings in the 2009 ARIS survey:

• Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, to 36.1 million, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population, from 16.3 percent in 2001 to 15.8 percent today.

• Mormons — members of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — have increased in numbers enough (3.1 million) to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population.

• The number of Muslim Americans continues to grow, from 527,000 in 1990, to 1.3 million today. Immigration accounts for the most of the increase, including Iranian refugees from the 1979 revolution, Bosnians from the 1990s war in the Balkans and Somalians from the still-ongoing violence there.

• Adherents of co-called “new religious movements” — including Wiccans and self-described Pagans — have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s. While there was no census of American Pagans in 1990, the 2001 ARIS survey did report at least 307,000 Americans identifying themselves as such, with 134,000 professing to be Wiccans, 33,000 as Druids and 140,000 as eclectic “neo-Pagans” of a wide spectrum of traditions.

(For the 2009 survey, there was no faith-specific breakdown of adherents in the “new religious movements” category, instead listing 2.8 million such Americans today, compared to 1.7 million in 2001.)

• The number of American adherents of Eastern religions — Buddhism, Shinto and Hinduism — which more than doubled in the 1990s — has declined slightly, from 2.02 million in 1990 to 1.96 million today. However, the number of Buddhists alone edged up slightly from 1.08 million in 2001 to 1.18 million now.

(Buddhists have their own major holiday in December: Bodhi Day –December 8 — which celebrates the story of how the philosopher Siddartha Gautama of India became the Buddha by sitting under a bodhi tree and vowing to remain there until he achieved total enlightenment.)

• In strictly religious terms, Jewish Americans continue to decline numerically, from 3.1 million in 1990 to 2.7 million today — 1.2 percent of the population. However, when defined more broadly as an ethnic group, including those who do not practice the faith, the American Jewish community has remained remarkably stable since 1990.

ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS ONLY A TINY FRACTION OF U.S. POPULATION; SECULARISTS DROPPED FROM SURVEY

Only a tiny fraction of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic, the new ARIS survey found. But based on stated beliefs, 1.62 million, or 2.3 percent, are atheist (believe there is no God) and 1.98 million, or 4.3 percent, are agnostic (unsure if God exists or not).

The 2001 ARIS survey counted only 53,000 Americans as identifying themselves as “secular” and even fewer — 43,000 — calling themselves “humanists.” There was no accounting of either group in 1991 and they were dropped from the 2009 survey as statistically insignificant.

The truth is, America in the closing days of 2009 is more religiously and spiritually diverse now than it’s ever been before in its more-than-233-year history — and conservative Christian majoritarians are going to have to deal with it, whether they like it or not.

IS IT A PAGAN CHRISTMAS OR A CHRISTIAN YULE?

If they wanted to, today’s Pagans could reclaim the Christmas tree — indeed, all the decorative trappings of Christmas, save for the Nativity creche — as being rightfully theirs, since Pagans created them in the first place.

But modern Pagans are a practical lot, with most viewing Christmas simply as the Christian world celebrating Yule in their own way — albeit, three to five days after the actual winter solstice — and thus see no conflict in celebrating at least the secular aspects of Christmas themselves.

And December isn’t called the holiday season for nothing. There’s also Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day and scores of other holidays and festivals around the world this month — all of which culminate in the ringing in of the new year at midnight on December 31.

Thanks to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar as the universal calendar used worldwide and the global system of 24 time zones, New Year’s Day is our only truly global holiday — which we all got to watch unfold on our TV screens in all its joyful glory a decade ago as we greeted the turn of the millennium (albeit, a year too soon, since there mathematically never was a Year Zero).

So whichever way you celebrate the holidays, may yours be filled with joy, peace and love.

Blessed Be! And Happy Holidays.

###

SUGGESTED BOOKS (Available at Amazon.com):

<Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling (Paperback – November 4, 2006).

The Origins of Christmas by Joseph F. Kelly (Paperback – August 2004).

Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth by Dorothy Morrison (Paperback – September 1, 2000).

###

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Plan By Federal Government to Purchase Underutilized Maximum-Security State Prison in President’s Home State Is Attacked By Republicans as ‘a Threat to U.S. Security’ and By Rights Advocates as ‘Continuation of Unconstitutional Bush Policy’ — But Welcomed By State Officials as a ‘Much-Needed Boost’ to Job-Starved Local Economy

(Photo: U.S. Department of Defense)

The controversy over what to do with the estimated 240 remaining terror suspects now being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp (above) — which President Obama pledged to close by the end of the year — remains a red-hot political controversy that flared anew this week after the Obama administration announced that it was purchasing an underutilized maximum-security state prison in Illinois to house the detainees. the announcement triggered sharp criticism form both sides of the ongoing debate over Guantánamo Bay, with conservatives blasting the plan as posing a threat to the safety of Americans and human-rights advocates denouncing it as a continuation of former President George W. Bush’s policy of indefinite detention that violates the U.S. Constitution and international law.

Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Thursday, December 17, 2009)

The controversy over what to do with the estimated 240 remaining terror suspects now being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp (above) — which President Obama pledged to close by the end of the year — remains a red-hot political controversy that flared anew this week after the Obama administration announced that it was purchasing an underutilized maximum-security state prison in Illinois to house the detainees.

The announcement triggered sharp criticism form both sides of the ongoing debate over Guantánamo Bay, with conservatives blasting the plan as posing a threat to the safety of Americans and human-rights advocates denouncing it as a continuation of former President George W. Bush’s policy of indefinite detention that violates the U.S. Constitution and international law.

You can read the full story HERE.

President’s Address Defending the Use of Force When Necessary Was Reflective of the Elder Bush, Who Went to War to Stop Saddam Hussein’s Aggression Against Kuwait With the Broad Support of the World Community — Unlike the Younger Bush, Who Defied the World to Finish Off the Iraqi Dictator in Apparent Revenge For Saddam’s Attempt to Kill His Father

Sarah Palin had some rare praise Thursday for President Obama after the president delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway on Thursday, in which he acknowledged the irony of  accepting a prize for peace at a time when he is leading the United States in a time of war. Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee, said that she would like to see the president act more like his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama’s speech, however, appears to indicate that he intends to act more like Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who responded to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait by building the largest international military alliance since World War II to force the Iraqis out, whereas the younger Bush defied the world to finish off Saddam by invading Iraq  in 2003. (Photos: Getty Images)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, December 14, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Republicans are a fickle bunch. After months of attacking President Obama relentlessly, now, all of a sudden, they’re praising him.

Within hours after the president accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway on Thursday, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee — and one of Obama’s most severe critics — actually applauded the president’s acceptance speech.

“I liked what he said,” Palin told USA Today in an interview after the speech.  “I talked too in my book [Going Rogue: An American Story] about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.”

Only a week ago, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report ripped Palin in a blistering editorial for lending tacit support to the “birther” movement — a movement  motivated by racist and Islamophobic bigotry against Obama — after Palin told a right-wing radio talk-show host that she “didn’t have a problem” with people raising the issue of the president’s place of birth.

It should be noted that Palin’s eldest son, Track, is serving in the Army. Track Palin, 20, is currently stateside, having just returned from Iraq.  It’s not known whether the younger Palin will return to Iraq or be sent to Afghanistan in the near future.

But Sarah Palin isn’t alone in her praise for the president. Other conservative Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, compared Obama’s speech, in which he said that there are times when the use of force is necessary for a greater good — the concept of a “just war”- to that of  Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

Appearing on the public radio program “The Takeaway,” Gingrich said he thought the president’s speech was very good. “He clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely, but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said, that there is evil in the world,” Gingrich said.

“I think having a liberal president who goes to Oslo on behalf of a peace prize and reminds the committee that they would not be free, they wouldn’t be able to have a peace prize, without having force… I thought in some ways it’s a very historic speech,” Gingrich continued. “And the president, I think, did a very good job of representing the role of America which has been that of – at the risk of lives of young Americans – creating the fabric of security within which you could have a Martin Luther King Jr. or you could have a Mahatma Gandhi.”

Palin said the president’s remarks had a familiar ring. “We have to stop those terrorists over there,” she told USA Today. “We’ve learned our lesson from 9/11. George Bush did a great job of reminding Americans every single day that he was in office what that lesson is. And, by the way, I’d like to see President Obama follow more closely in the footsteps of George Bush and [Bush’s] passion keeping the homeland safe, his passion for respecting – honoring our troops.”

OBAMA: ‘THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE USE OF FORCE IS NECESSARY . . .’

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama acknowledged the irony of accepting the prize for peace as the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. “One of these wars [in Iraq] is winding down,” the president said. “The other [in Afghanistan] is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty-three other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.”

The president told his audience that “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Noting that he was accepting the Peace Prize exactly 45 years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the 1964 Peace Prize for his leadership in the nonviolent movement to win greater civil rights for African-Americans, the nation’s first black president acknowledged that “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of [Mahatma] Gandhi and King.”

But as a head of state “sworn to protect and defend my nation,” Obama continued, “I cannot be guided by their examples alone.” As president, said Obama, “I [must] face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.”

Unfortunately, “A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies,” the president continued. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism. It is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”

‘. . . BUT EVEN WHEN IT’S NECESSARY, WAR IS NEVER GLORIOUS’

Nonetheless, the president continued, “This truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.”

Part of the world’s challenge “is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings,” Obama said. “Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President [John F.] Kennedy called for long ago. ‘Let us focus,’ he said, ‘on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.'”

As president, Obama said, “I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates — and weakens — those who don’t.”

Obama noted that “The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.”

Without mentioning his predecessor by name — but reminding his audience of Bush’s actions that drew fierce international opposition — the president acknowledged that “America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention — no matter how justified.”

Obama acknowledged that in those situations where force is necessary, “we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength.

“That is why I prohibited torture,” the president continued. “That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.”

REPUBLICANS COMPARING OBAMA TO THE WRONG GEORGE BUSH

It was clear from his speech that Obama was evoking several of his predecessors — including Jimmy Carter, who, in his 1980 State of the Union address following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, declared that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region.

So it should come as no surprise that conservative Republicans would draw comparisons between Obama and George W. Bush.  The trouble is, they’re comparing the president to the wrong Bush.

Obama’s speech was far more reflective of his predecessor’s father, George H.W. Bush — and,  at the same time, a damning indictment of his son. For Bush 41 did something that Bush 43 failed to do: He went to war with the full support of the world community to stop an aggressor that attacked a neighboring nation.

The elder Bush — a World War II veteran — went to the United Nations and won a series of Security Council resolutions demanding Iraq withdraw its troops from Kuwait. When Iraq refused to comply, the Security Council ultimately authorized the use of force to remove them.

What’s forgotten is that the elder Bush also reached out to the Arab League, which passed its own resolutions condemning the Iraqi invasion. Saudi Arabia — the world’s most important oil producer and exporter — was particularly fearful that Saddam would later send his armies to seize its northern oil fields. At the request of King Fahd, Bush sent U.S. troops to northern Saudi Arabia to prevent such an invasion.

In the months that followed, the elder Bush succeeded in building a coalition of 34 countries — the largest international military alliance since World War II — to join forces with the U.S. in opposing the Iraqi invasion. Significantly, the coalition included 11 Muslim nations.

By the time the UN Security Council authorized the use of force against Iraq and the Gulf War began on January 17, 1991, there were forces on the ground from Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Spain, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Although they did not contribute any forces, the 33rd and 34th countries in the anti-Iraq alliance — Japan and Germany — made financial contributions totaling $10 billion and $6.6 billion respectively. Nonetheless, Americans made up  73 percent  of the alliance’s nearly one million troops deployed against Iraq.

BUSH SR. WARNED IN HIS MEMOIRS THAT TOPPLING SADDAM WOULD HAVE ‘INCURRED INCALCULABLE COSTS’

After successfully driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, the elder Bush rejected strong urgings from conservatives to advance U.S. forces into Baghdad to topple Saddam’s regime. Indeed, after the Gulf War ended, conservatives sharply criticized Bush Sr. for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power.

The elder Bush fired back in his 1998 memoir, A World Transformed, which was co-written by his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.  “Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq,” Bush wrote, “would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . .

“We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq,” the elder Bush wrote. “The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles.”

FLASHBACK: SADDAM TRIED TO KILL BUSH SR. DURING 1993 VISIT TO U.S. TROOPS IN KUWAIT

The 41st president’s son either never read his father’s memoirs or, if he did read them, chose to ignore his father’s warning about toppling Saddam Hussein. As it turned out, Bush 43 went to war in defiance of the world community and invaded another country without provocation to topple the very same dictator who had sent his army into Kuwait 13 years earlier.

The 43rd president’s publicly stated motivation was to rid Iraq of its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. But it turned out that no such stockpile existed — nearly all of Iraq’s WMDs had been destroyed within six months after the Gulf War ended, but Saddam kept up the appearance that Iraq still had them to deter an attack, according to Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector for the UN.

But Bush 43 refused to see it that way — at least not publicly.

So what was George W. Bush’s real motivation for going to war to topple Saddam Hussein? Simply put, revenge. Bush 43 wanted to exact revenge against Saddam Hussein for his attempt to kill Bush’s father.

And he was going to take down Saddam no matter what the world thought of it, according to secret transcripts revealed in October 2007 by Spain’s largest daily newspaper, El Pais.

In case you’ve forgotten, let’s travel back in time to February 1993. The elder Bush — having turned the keys to the White House over to his successor, Bill Clinton, just a month earlier — was visiting U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait, ostensibly to say farewell as their commander-in-chief and to congratulate them for liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

But Bush had a target on his back. Saddam Hussein — his armies driven out of Kuwait and much of his country’s infrastructure laid waste by U.S. and allied bombs and missiles — saw an opportunity to exact revenge against his nemesis, the United States, by killing the man who routed his army.

So Saddam sent a team of assassins to Kuwait to kill Bush — but they were quickly captured by Kuwaiti security forces. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 people who allegedly planned to drive a car loaded with explosives near Bush and detonate it, killing the former president.

Through interviews with the suspects and examinations of the bombs’ circuitry and wiring, the FBI established that the plot had been carried out by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, according to the PBS documentary series, “Frontline.” A Kuwaiti court later convicted all but one of the defendants.

Two months after it was foiled, the assassination plot was revealed to the world.  In retaliation, President Clinton ordered the firing of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s headquarters in Baghdad. The day before the strike commenced, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, went before the Security Council to present evidence of the Iraqi plot.

After the missiles were fired, Vice President Al Gore said the attack “was intended to be a proportionate response at the place where this plot” to assassinate Bush “was hatched and implemented.”  The Clinton administration subsequently authorized the CIA in 1996 to organize a coup against Saddam, only to be foiled by the dictator’s intelligence service.

BUSH 43 PLOTTED TO OVERTHROW SADDAM FROM THE DAY HE TOOK OFFICE

That the younger Bush wanted to exact revenge against Saddam for attempting to kill his father was revealed by Bush himself, when in an address to the UN General Assembly in September 2002, he let it slip that “In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Amir of Kuwait and a former American president.”

Bush later admitted publicly that he made preparations to overthrow Saddam as soon as he took office. “The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear — like the previous administration, we were for regime change,” Bush told reporters in 2004 in a joint news conference with Mexico’s then-President Vicente Fox. “And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with (enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq) and so we were fashioning policy along those lines.”

Bush said the September 11 attacks put him “on a hair trigger” to take pre-emptive action against Iraq rather than wait for evidence of a new threat to Americans. But the fact is, Bush 43 used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to move forward with his months-long plans to overthrow Saddam.

While neither of the Bushes, father and son, will admit it publicly, there was a deep ideological divide between them, according to author Craig Unger in his book, The Fall of the House of Bush.

“George H.W. Bush was a genial man with few bitter enemies,” Unger writes, “but his son had managed to appoint — as secretary of defense no less — one of the very few who fit the bill: Donald Rumsfeld. Once Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney took office — the latter supposedly a loyal friend — they had brought in one neoconservative policymaker after another to the Pentagon, the vice president’s office, and the National Security Council.

“In some cases,” Unger continued, “these were the same men who had battled the elder Bush when he was head of the CIA in 1976. These were the same men who fought him when he decided not to take down Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Their goal in life seemed to be to dismantle his legacy.”

And, indeed, they did. How else can you explain today’s Republicans comparing Obama to the younger Bush, who brought disgrace to this country’s good name during his eight years in the White House?

A more intriguing question: Given the apparent ideological rift between father and son, was Bush 43 out to “one-up” his father by getting rid of Saddam? The answer to that question perhaps can be better answered by the historians.

But for today’s Republicans to compare Obama to Bush 43 is an insult — not only to Obama, but also to Bush 41.

# # #

Volume IV, Number 94

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

In Interview With Right-Wing Talk Radio Host, Ex-Governor of Alaska and ’08 GOP Veep Nominee Says She ‘Doesn’t Have a Problem’ With President’s Birthplace Becoming Issue in 2012; Owner of Car Dealership in Colorado Insists Obama Is a Muslim and Accuses Him of Being ‘Anti-Christian’ in Wake of Fort Hood Massacre

Phillip Wolf, who owns a car dealership in a Denver suburb, erected this billboard that challenges President Obama to produce his birth certificate. Wolf — despite his insistence that he’s not a racist — thus becomes one of the newest members of the racially-and-religiously-motivated hate campaign by the so-called “birther” movement to drive the nation’s first black president out of office, fueled by the false belief that Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen and is occupying the White House illegally and/or that he is a Muslim with ties to radical jihadists. And Wolf is not alone: Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has expressed sympathy with the birthers’ hate campaign, telling a right-wing radio talk-show host that she “doesn’t have a problem” with it — and did not rule out bringing it up as an issue if she decides to make a run for the White House in the 2012 campaign. (Photo courtesy KDVR-TV, Denver)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, December 7, 2009)

==================================

A ‘SKEETER BITES REPORT EDITORIAL

==================================

The “birther bigots” — the movement that stubbornly clings to the repeatedly-proven-false belief that President Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen and is illegally holding the presidency — is nothing if not determined in its racially-and-religiously-motivated hate campaign to drive the nation’s first African-American president out of office.

That the “birthers” are motivated by sheer bigotry was made even more evident last week when the owner of an automotive dealership in a Denver suburb erected a billboard displaying a caricature of the president wearing a turban and bearing the words “President or Jihad?”

And now former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has effectively joined the ranks of the “birther bigots” by publicly declaring that she “doesn’t have a problem” with those who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, still stubbornly insist that the president is not a native-born American, but a native of his father’s homeland of Kenya — a belief that the Kenyan government dismissed as “madness” and “a red herring” and even many mainstream conservatives brand “loony.”

PALIN DOESN’T RULE OUT MAKING OBAMA’S BIRTHPLACE AN ISSUE IN 2012 — IF SHE RUNS

During a radio interview with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries as part of her national tour to promote her book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin, asked if — should she decide to run for the White House in 2012 — she would make Obama’s birthplace an issue, said, “I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that.”

Palin added, “I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers.”

Asked by Humphries if the question of whether the president is a native-born U.S. citizen, as the Constitution requires, is a “fair question,” Palin replied, “I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game.”

Palin sought unsuccessfully to make Obama’s longtime friendship with his former pastor, the now-retired Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an issue in the 2008 campaign. She was repeatedly overruled by John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, on the grounds that to bring up Wright would leave the McCain-Palin campaign vulnerable to accusations of race-baiting.

Palin told Humphries that McCain’s refusal to bring up Reverend Wright showed that “the McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don’t think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we’re seeing manifest in the administration.”

But McCain, to his credit, was determined not to be seen as a bigot — especially after he was forced to confront the birthers’ open hatred of Obama head-on during a town hall-style campaign stop in Minnesota less than a month before the election.

OWNER OF COLORADO CAR DEALERSHIP REVEALS HIS MISPLACED ANTI-MUSLIM BIAS AGAINST OBAMA

At virtually the same time Palin made her comments, the owner of an automotive dealership in a Denver suburb triggered a furor by erecting a billboard that compares the president to a terrorist and demands that the president prove that he is a native-born U.S. citizen by producing his Hawaii birth certificate — in spite of the fact that Obama had done so well over a year ago and that it had been certified by the State of Hawaii.

Phillip Wolf, owner of Wolf Automotive in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, accused the president of lying about where he was born. “This man is not telling the truth,” Wolf said. “He should prove he’s an American.”

Wolf also insisted that Obama is a Muslim — despite all evidence to the contrary that he is a Christian, including the president’s 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in his adopted hometown of Chicago, now headed by the Reverend Otis Moss III.

“Everything I have read about Obama points right to the fact that he is a Muslim,” Wolf told Denver’s KDVR-TV, “And that is the agenda of what Muslim is all about. It’s about anti-American, it’s about anti-Christianity.”

Wolf said he was prompted to put up his billboard by the November 5 massacre at the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, in which Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim suspected of having ties to radical jihadists, went on a shooting rampage on the sprawling base, killing 13 people and injuring over a dozen others before he was himself shot and wounded by a civilian police officer.

Hasan, who’s now at a military hospital in San Antonio, faces 13 counts of murder.

Wolf insisted that he’s not a racist, claiming that his wife is a Latina and that he cast a write-in vote in last year’s presidential election for Alan Keyes, a right-wing African-American commentator who ran unsuccessfully against Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate contest in Illinois.

To which we at The ‘Skeeter Bites Report respond with two words: Prove it.

WHY HAVE WOLF AND PALIN JOINED FORCES WITH ‘BIRTHER BIGOTS?’

If Wolf isn’t a bigot, as he claims he’s not, then why has he — as well as Palin — chosen to join forces with a movement that has been documented again and again over the past year to be motivated by a combination of misplaced Islamophobic bigotry and thinly-disguised racism against this president?

Why have Wolf and Palin chosen to align themselves with a movement that includes many self-avowed white supremacists?

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report has documented the fact that the belief that Obama is a foreigner has become fodder in white-supremacist circles, including Stormfront, the largest and best-known “white-nationalist” site on the Web; and the Council of Conservative Citizens, listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the largest white-nationalist group in America” — essentially a reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils that were formed in the South to resist racial desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily has been — and continues to be — particularly bullheaded in its stubborn insistence that Obama is not a native-born American, despite one claim after another being debunked, even hawking a video that challenges Obama’s citizenship.

WND was founded in 1997 by Joseph Farah, a firebrand social conservative who was editor-in-chief of the now-defunct right-wing California newspaper The Sacramento Union. Farah is a fierce proponent of the “birther” conspiracy theory — and he vows never to let up.

“It’ll plague Obama throughout his presidency,” Farah insists. “It’ll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on Bill Clinton’s presidency. It’s not going to go away, and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public.”

WND’s senior editor is Jerome Corsi, author of the highly controversial and largely discredited book, The Obama Nation, which The ‘Skeeter Bites Report flatly consider libelous — and who has connections with known white supremacists.

Corsi, who dwelled extensively in his book on the two interracial marriages of the president’s white, Kansas-born mother, Stanley Ann Dunham — first to his black father from Kenya, Barack Obama, Sr. and later to his Asian stepfather from Indonesia, Lolo Seotoro — went so far as to promote his book on several white-supremacist Internet media outlets, including Stormfront’s “Political Cesspool” online radio show,according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremist groups.

Then there is Palin — who did nothing to stop an eruption of blatantly racist passions against Obama at her solo campaign appearances during the final weeks before last year’s election — passions that were captured in a shocking report by a correspondent for the English-language channel of al-Jazeera and openly stoked by Palin herself.

That prompted The ‘Skeeter Bites Report to declare in a strongly-worded editorial on October 20, 2008 — which included a video of the al-Jazeera report — that Palin was unfit to serve as the nation’s vice president.

In the wake of her latest comments to Humphries, it’s clear to us that the former Alaska governor is even more unfit to serve as president and that for her own sake, she would be wise not to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 — or make any other run for the White House at any time in the future beyond that.

ADL CONDEMNS WOLF’S BILLBOARD AS ‘HATEFUL’ AND ‘DIVISIVE’

Wolf’s billboard was condemned by the Mountain States chapter of the Anti-Defamation League for exploiting the Fort Hood massacre “in a context replete with bigotry.”

In a statement issued by Bruce DeBoskey, the ADL’s Mountain States director, the anti-hate watchdog branded Wolf’s billboard “divisive and offensive” and that it “perpetuates hateful and harmful stereotypes about Muslims.”

The ADL’s national office noted back in August that since Obama’s election, anger among white supremacists and other right-wing extremists “resulted in an avalanche of vitriolic postings on racist Web sites.”

Meanwhile, a liberal radio talk-show host, David Sirota, said that Wolf’s billboard was an example of right-wing hatred of the president flying “out of control.”

“This brings together all those strands of [hate]: the racism, the anti-Muslim fervor,” Sirota told KDVR-TV. “It’s one thing to criticize the president on health care, or Wall Street reform, or immigration. But this is outrageous. And I think it’s a fair question to ask why these questions about religion and ancestry are being directed so viciously at the first African-American president of the United States.”

A liberal group, Progress Now Colorado, has called for a boycott of Wolf’s dealearship. Bobby Clark, a PNC spokesman, told The Denver Post that “birthers” and “teabaggers” like Wolf have been “emboldened” by right-wing politicians and media pundits.

“When people like Rush Limbaugh . . . Glenn Beck and elected officials like Sarah Palin . . . openly question the president’s citizenship and compare him to terrorists, it gives permission to this kind of speech,” Clark said. “It’s hateful. It’s racist. It’s outrageous.”

Wolf also owns auto delearships in Wyoming and Montana, but it was not clear if they would also be targeted for boycotts.

‘BIRTHER QUEEN’ TAITZ: A RABID ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOT TIED TO KAHANE EXTREMISTS

Then there is Orly Taitz, by far the most notorious of the “birther bigots.” The seemingly inexhaustibly litigious Taitz has seen one lawsuit after another seeking to prove the Obama was born in Kenya thrown out of court as frivolous after one alleged “Kenyan” birth certificate after another filed by Taitz as “evidence” was quickly exposed as forgeries.

Who can forget her highly combative appearance on MSNBC last August? In that interview, Taitz was confronted by anchor David Shuster’s pointing out that announcements of Obama’s birth at a Honolulu hospital on August 4,  1961 were published a week later by both of the city’s two major newspapers, the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin.

The Star-Bulletin even noted in an editorial published last July that the birth announcements published in the two newspapers are available for viewing on microfilm at the main branch of the Hawaii State Library in Honolulu.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report subsequently revealed in a September 7 expose that Taitz — an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Moldova who holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship — is a rabidly anti-Muslim bigot who considers the president a “dangerous threat” to the security of Israel.

We also revealed that Taitz had support from the Jewish Task Force, a radical extremist group whose members, according to its Web site, follow the teachings of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League (JDL), who later emigrated to Israel and founded the far-right extremist Kach Party — which was subsequently outlawed as a racist organization by the Israeli government.

The JTF, like Taitz, adamantly insists that President Obama is a Muslim and considers him a traitor to the U.S. and a direct threat to Israel.  “We are opposed to Israel surrendering land for ‘peace,'” the JTF declared on its Web site. “We are also opposed to Islamic terrorism, which we believe is an integral part of Islam.”

A JTF subsidiary, Jews Against Obama, posted a highly inflammatory video on its Web site that claims Obama “wants to destroy Israel.”

IT’S TIME TO CALL THE ‘BIRTHERS’ OUT AS THE BIGOTS THEY REALLY ARE

So it should come as no surprise that the “birther” movement would be riddled with with white supremacists, anti-Muslim bigots and other extremists, persisting in their hate campaign against Obama no matter how thoroughly their “evidence” against the president is debunked again and again and again.

To use Wolf’s own words against him, the time has come to “call a spade a spade” — as he did against the president — and call out the “birthers” as the bigots that they really are. By now, it should be clear to everyone that bigotry is the only reason why the “birthers” continue in their drive to kick the nation’s first black president out of office — no matter how vehemently they deny it.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report has no doubt that this hate campaign would not exist if Obama was a white man — and we defy the “birthers” to try to prove otherwise. To paraphrase Clint Eastwood: Go ahead, “birther” punks — make our day.

Sincerely,

Skeeter Sanders

Editor & Publisher

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

As Expected, President’s Plan to Send Up to 30,000 Additional Troops Draws Flak From Both Anti-War Activists as ‘Too High a Price to Pay’ in American Blood and From Conservatives as ‘Sending Wrong Message to the Enemy’ on Withdrawal Timetable

President Obama outlines his plan to send up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to an in-person audience of Army cadets — and to the nation as a whole — during his first prime-time televised address Tuesday night at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. The president’s long-awaited strategy on Afghanistan, as expected, drew sharp criticism from both anti-war activists and liberal Democrats on the left and from conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers on the right. (Photo: Jim Young/Reuters)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Thursday, December 3, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

President Obama’s long-awaited unveiling of his new strategy in Afghanistan Tuesday night to deploy up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to the war-ravaged country — with a timetable to begin a phased withdrawal a year and a half from now — has, as expected, drawn sharply negative reviews from both anti-war activists who supported his candidacy last year and right-wing critics who have dogged him since he took office nearly a year ago.

A coalition of up to 100 anti-war activists has called for a mass protest in Washington on December 12 to demand an end to all U.S. military action in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, TalkingPointsMemo.com reported Wednesday.

The activists, under the name “End U.S. Wars,” posted an open letter to the president on the coalition’s Web site, in which they pledged to support only anti-war candidates in the 2010 midterm election — and warned that they will “seriously consider backing an explicitly anti-war primary candidate to challenge you during the Democratic primaries [in 2012].”

On the other side, right-wing radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday branded the president’s address “incoherent” and blasted his new Afghanistan strategy as “the policy of a left-wing politician, not a serious commander-in-chief who leaves the strategies to the experts.”

Limbaugh tore into the president’s address as being “all about placating as many sides of the political spectrum as there are.  The last thing it was about was military victory . . . He didn’t talk about victory because, remember, he’s uncomfortable with the concept of victory.”

PRESIDENT: OUR MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN IS NOT LIKE VIETNAM

Anticipating much of the criticism against his strategy, the president sought to refute them head-on in his Tuesday-night address. He rejected comparisons to Vietnam, insisting that, unlike that war, Washington leads a coalition of 43 nations and is not facing a “broad-based popular insurgency.”

“To abandon this area now — and to rely only on efforts against al-Qaida from a distance — would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al-Qaida, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland,” Obama said.

To those who have argued against increasing U.S. troop levels, the president insisted that “the status quo is not sustainable” due to continuing gains by the Taliban.

To Republican objections that he failed to follow the recommendations of General Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in the region, for a greater and more open-ended escalation, Obama was dismissive. “I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests,” he said.

CODE PINK STAGES CAPITOL HILL PROTEST

On Wednesday, members of Code Pink, an anti-war women’s group, staged a protest outside the Capitol Building in Washington as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary William Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The protesters called on Clinton and Mullen not to make “an epic mistake.”

As Clinton arrived, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin shouted out,

“Hillary! You know better!” Her fellow protesters then called out at Mullen, “Mike! That’s a peaceful name!” briefly catching Mullen’s eye. “We can’t afford this escalation or this war!”

Benjamin then chimed in, “You do realize this is a misadventure. The Afghans don’t need more troops, they need more economic development, jobs.” She warned of “an endless cycle of violence” if the troop buildup goes forward.

KERRY GIVES QUALIFIED ENDORSEMENT, BUT FEINGOLD SAYS NO

Reaction on Capitol Hill was more muted, but still reflected sharp divisions in both parties toward Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a qualified endorsement Tuesday night, giving the president high marks for “defining a narrower mission, not an open-ended nation-building exercise.”

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who later opposed that conflict, made it clear, however, that his support for sending additional troops to Afghanistan is based on a “strict understanding of the need to transfer and build as well as partner with Afghans,” and he warned that unless authority is quickly handed over to the Afghan government, it “will end in failure, no matter how many troops we send [there].”

But Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) said he opposes the troop buildup in Afghanistan because it’s a misguided mission.

“Many believe, and I’m one of them, that this could push more extremists into Pakistan and destabilize a country that’s much more dangerous,” Feingold told Wausau television station WAOW-TV on Wednesday. “So when the President says we need to do this to finish the job, I say, ‘What job?’ Al-Qaida is not based in Afghanistan anymore and to the extent they’re there, we can handle it without putting hundreds of thousands of troops.”

REPUBLICANS BACK ‘SURGE,’ BUT DISLIKE WITHDRAWAL TIMETABLE

For their part, Republicans on Tuesday for the most part expressed support for  Obama’s decision, but they also expressed deep displeasure with his pledge to draw down forces in a year and a half.

Even before Obama delivered his address, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), the president’s opponent in last year’s election, made clear his opposition to the timetable. “Dates for withdrawal are dictated by conditions,” McCain told reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “The way that you win wars is to break the enemy’s will, not to announce dates that you are leaving.”

At a White House meeting with Obama late Tuesday, McCain and other leading Republicans were assured by the president and other administration officials that he would indeed let the progress of the war determine the pace of the drawdown.

Nonethelss, the president’s decision did not mollify many of his Republican critics, who, like Limbaugh, accused Obama of trying to appeal to those who oppose escalation of the war even as he called for a troop increase.

Representative Howard McKeon (R-California) the ranking minority member on the House Armed Services Committee, told Reuters he was disturbed by the president’s exit timetable. “I don’t like having a deadline,” said McKeon. “You can have one in mind, but why tell the enemy?”

REACTION IN KABUL JUST AS DIVIDED AS IN WASHINGTON

The reaction in Afghanistan to Obama’s address was just as divided as that in this country.

“The U.S. president’s speech was very important,” Foreign Minister Dadfar Rangin Spanta was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse on Wednesday. “Mr. Obama said that the United States will take the necessary steps to help Afghanistan.”

But other Afghan officials said that they opposed the “surge,” citing past influxes of troops that failed to push back the insurgency.

“We couldn’t solve the Afghanistan problem in eight years, but now the U.S. wants to solve it in 18 months? I don’t see how it could be done,” Segbatullah Sanjar, chief policy adviser for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told The Wall Street Journal.

The Taliban insurgents, however, issued a dismissive communique that the U.S. troop increase would only strengthen their movement. “However many more troops the enemy sends against our Afghan muhejedeen, they are committed to increasing the number of muhejedeen and strengthen their resistance,” the Taliban’s communique said, warning that more U.S. soldiers “will die because of it.”

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

President Said Repeatedly During ’08 Campaign That Bush’s War in Iraq Was a Distraction From the ‘Real War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Is Shifting U.S. Resources Accordingly — But He Risks Alienating His Hard-Core Anti-War Supporters Who Voted for Him Amid Sharp Divisions in Public Sentiment on Whether to Send In More Troops

President Obama speaks to members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn III (to the president’s left) and Vice President Joe Biden (back to camera) take notes during a recent meeting at the White House Situation Room. After weeks of deliberations with his military chiefs and national security advisers, the president is scheduled to deliver his first prime-time televised address to the nation tomorrow night (Tuesday), during which he will announce a significant increase in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. While the number of troops to be deployed is reported to be fewer than the 40,000 requested by General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander there, the buildup comes amid declining public support for the war effort. (Photo: Pete Souza/The White House)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, November 30, 2009)

(Updated 11:30 a.m. EST Monday, November 30, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama said repeatedly that President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a distraction from “the real war on terror” in Afghanistan. “We took our eye off Afghanistan and fought the wrong war in Iraq,” Obama said at every opportunity on the stump.

Now, more than six-and-a-half years after Bush sent nearly a quarter-million United States troops to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and nearly a year into his own presidency, Obama is about make good on his campaign promise to shift America’s focus back to Afghanistan.

After weeks of meetings and deliberations with his top military officers and national security advisers, the president is scheduled to deliver his first prime-time televised address to the nation tomorrow night (Tuesday) to announce a significant increase in the number of American forces in Afghanistan.

============================================

===========================================

The commander-in-chief will deliver his address before an assembly of Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. The president said last week that, more than eight years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, “it is still in America’s vital national interest to dismantle and destroy” al-Qaida and its extremist allies.

For Obama, tomorrow night’s speech is a “moment of truth”  that — like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and both George Bushes, father and son, before him — will ultimately make or break his presidency.

Obama won last year’s election in large part because millions of Americans who had grown tired of the Iraq War voted for Obama on the strength of his outspoken opposition to that conflict. Now he risks incurring the wrath of many of his supporters who thought they voted in a president who would end both wars and bring U.S. troops home.

NEW POLLS FIND PUBLIC OPINION SHARPLY DIVIDED ON AFGHAN WAR, TROOP BUILDUP

And the president is about the announce his decision amid sharply conflicting sentiment on the war effort among the American public overall. A November 17 Washington Post/ABC News Poll found that the percentage of Americans in favor of maintaining the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan fell to  44 percent, with 52 percent saying that the effort there wasn’t worth it.

However, a USA Today/Gallup Poll released last week found that, even as public support for the war has fallen dramatically, Americans nonetheless remain sharply divided on whether to send in more troops or to start bringing them home.

The poll found a slight uptick in the percentage of Americans supporting an increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, with 47 percent in favor of adding troops and 39 percent preferring a cutback. Just two weeks ago, the USA Today/Gallup Poll found the public almost evenly split, with 37 percent favoring an increase, while the percentage favoring a reduction remained unchanged at 39 percent.

DEMOCRATS BALK, REPUBLICANS BACK OBAMA ON WAR; INDEPENDENTS SPLIT

With Obama expected to announce that anywhere from 30,000 to 35,000 more U.S. troops will be deployed to Afghanistan — fewer than the 40,000 that General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of American forces, had asked for — he is likely to face a reversal of political fortune: Even as Democrats rebel against him, the president is drawing support from the opposition Republicans.

The new USA Today/Gallup Poll found that a solid 57 percent of Democrats favor a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, while only 29 percent favor a buildup. In sharp contrast, an overwhelming 72 percent of Republicans favor a troop increase, while only 17 percent favor a pullout.

Independents — those mostly moderate-to-conservative voters who are absolutely vital to the Democrats keeping control of Congress in 2010 and to the president winning a second term in 2012 — were almost evenly split, with 46 percent supporting a troop increase and 45 percent favoring a cutback.

“Republicans agree that a strategic review of the current situation in Afghanistan is warranted, and we will work to ensure that our commanders on the ground have all the additional troops they have requested,” said Representative John Boehner (R -Ohio), the House minority leader.

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), Obama’s opponent in last year’s election, has been pressing the president for months for a buildup in American forces in Afghanistan. Attending a international security forum in Canada on November 20, McCain told reporters that a hike in the number of U.S. troops to Afghanistan would bring on a more successful outcome of the war effort there, similar to Bush’s highly controversial “surge” of troops in Iraq.

“I even am bold enough to predict that within a year or 18 months, you will see success if the effort is sufficiently resourced and there is a commitment to get the job done before setting a date to leave the region,” McCain said.

AN EERIE ECHO OF VIETNAM: NIXON’S 1970 SPEECH ON CAMBODIA

For the millions of anti-war voters who cast their ballots for Obama in the belief that he would be an anti-war president and bring all American troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan, the president’s televised address on Tuesday night is likely to be seen by many of them as a betrayal  — and a repeat of history.

On April 30, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon, in a televised Oval Office address to the nation, announced an incursion of U.S. troops into Cambodia during the Vietnam War to disrupt what Nixon called North Vietnamese “sanctuaries.”

This led to massive protests by as many as four million young people on college campuses and even high schools across the nation, many of whom felt Nixon had betrayed them — and at the same time were openly fearful that they would end up on the battlefield, as military service back then was compulsory for able-bodied American men aged 18 to 26.

Forty years before Obama’s historic run for the White House, Nixon had campaigned for the presidency in 1968 on a  promise to bring  “an honorable end to the war in Vietnam,”  declaring that “Never has so much power been used so ineffectively as in Vietnam” — a direct slap at his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson.

Congress abolished the draft in 1973, just as Nixon began withdrawing American forces from Vietnam. However, all American males aged 18 to 25 are still required to register with the Selective Service System — even though there’s been no real political will in Congress to reinstate the draft since the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 with the passage in 1971 of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution.

EXPERTS WARN OF TROUBLE FOR DEMS IN 2010 IF THEY REJECT OBAMA STRATEGY

Political analysts inside and outside Washington warn that if Obama can’t convince his party to support a troop increase, the consequences could prove hazardous for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

“I think it threatens his domestic agenda pretty substantially, unless he takes the people along with him,”  Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas, told Politico.com. “That’s what a lot of other Democrats like [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi are worried about right now…..He risks alienating large chunks of the Democratic Party.”

Already, Obama has lost the support of anti-war firebrand Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who denounced the planned buildup as an “indefensible” escalation of the war, in defense of a “corrupt” government in Afghanistan. “We can’t afford this war,” Kucinich insisted. “We’ve  got to start focusing of things that matter to people here [in America] and what matters to people in the United States is not expanding the war in Afghanistan.

“We’ve got to get out of there,” Kucinich said.

Kucinich was one of only a handful of Democrats who in October voted against a must-pass $680 billion defense authorization bill — which included $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — despite the attachment of a measure long sought after by gay rights advocates to expand the federal hate crimes law to includes cases of bias-motivated crimes against gays.

“Every thinking person wants to take a stand against hate crimes, but isn’t war the most offensive of hate crimes?” asked Kucinich. “To have people have to make a choice, or contemplate the hierarchy of hate crimes, is cynical. I don’t vote to fund wars, period. If you are opposed to war, you don’t vote to authorize or appropriate money for it.”

AFGHANISTAN ‘SURGE’ FRAUGHT WITH RISKS

But in a commentary published by the World Politics Review in September, Thomas Barnett, a contributing editor and online columnist for Esquire magazine, warned that the U.S. was making a big mistake in failing to take into account the fact that the war in Afghanistan is an international effort.

“What’s especially odd about this debate is its stunningly self-centered tone,” Barnett wrote. “What are America’s national interests? How long can America last? How much will America be forced to spend in blood and treasure? What will happen to America’s standing if we withdraw? The whole conversation feels like a neurotic superpower talking to its therapist.

“We continue to debate our involvement as though this is ‘America’s war’ alone,” Barnett continued, “when it is nothing of the sort and never has been, even if its triggering tragedy — the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — is.”

About 55,000 NATO troops are in Afghanistan now, about half of whom are Americans. The president’s decision will enlarge the total U.S. force by more than 50 percent.

Then there is the warning issued on Veterans Day by Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, in which he wrote in is a series of diplomatic cables to Washington that sending in more troops would be unwise because of “rampant corruption” in the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the envoy said is undermining its legitimacy.

Eikenberry, a retired Army general and former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan under Bush, wrote that it would be “unwise” to send in more troops at a time when the domestic political situation in Afghanistan in the face of a still-disputed presidential election remained unsettled, despite Karzai’s apparent re-election victory.

For their part, Afghan officials insist the training of local security forces needs to be given top priority, so that their own troops can lead the fight against Taliban and other anti-government insurgents. But Western military advisers remain skeptical that this can be achieved anytime soon.

MORE TROOPS MEANS MORE CASUALTIES, EXPERT WARNS

Regardless of the war’s ultimate outcome, one thing is clear: Any increase in the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is sure to raise the specter of  increased American casualties, according to John Mueller, a professor of political science at Ohio State University.

“If [Obama’s] going to be more aggressive militarily, it means more Americans are going to die and that’s the thing that moves public opinion more than anything else,” Mueller told Politico.com, adding that with public opinion already on the brink of turning against the war, the president risks facing the same political fate with Afghanistan that befell Johnson and Nixon over Vietnam and Bush over Iraq.

“Once people are turned off on a war they tend to stay turned off,” Mueller said. “Even when it became clear that the war was decidedly going better, the numbers of people who supported it didn’t move much.”

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Holdout Democrats Still Opposed to the ‘Public Option’ Should Heed This Warning: Any Health-Reform Bill Without It Won’t Be Worth the Paper It’s Printed On for Those Who Can’t Afford Health Insurance; The Time Has Come for Majority Leader Reid to End ‘Tyranny of the Intransigent Minority’ and Choke Off GOP Filibuster by Invoking Reconciliation — or the ‘Nuclear Option’ — to Ensure the Bill’s Passage

The bill put forward by Senate Democrats to reform the American health-care system passed a key procedural hurdle Saturday. But the 60-39 party-line vote, while choking off a Republican filibuster to prevent the bill from reaching the floor, doesn’t guarantee that the measure will win final passage. At least one conservative Democrat, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, made it clear that she still opposes the so-called “public option” and has threatened to vote against the bill if the public option isn’t removed from it. But removing the public option from the bill will render the measure totally worthless — so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may have no choice but to invoke either reconciliation or the so-called “nuclear option” to ensure the bill’s passage with the public option intact. (Photo courtesy Senate.gov)

NOTE TO READERS: Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no Thursday edition of The ‘Skeeter Bites Report on November 26. The next regularly scheduled edition will be published next Monday, November 30. Happy Thanksgiving!

==================================

A ‘SKEETER BITES REPORT EDITORIAL

==================================

It’s crunch time for health-care reform.

With new opinion polls showing the American public sharply divided — and time running out before election-year pressure begins to bear down on lawmakers — Senate Democrats secured just enough support Saturday night to bring the massive, 2,000-plus-page health reform bill to the Senate floor for what is expected to be a long, emotional and acrimonious debate.

The 60-39 party-line vote — all 58 Democrats and two independents voting yes and all of the chamber’s Republicans except the absent Senator George Voinovich of Ohio voting no — cut off a GOP filibuster preventing the measure from coming to the floor.

But there’s no guarantee that the bill will muster the 60 votes required to overcome another GOP filibuster against the measure’s final passage.

That the measure — aimed at making health insurance coverage available to an estimated 31 million Americans who can’t afford it — still faces an uncertain future was made crystal clear shortly after the vote, when one Democrat, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, bluntly warned her colleagues that she remained adamantly opposed to the so-called “public option” — a government-run health insurance plan that would compete directly with private insurers.

‘PUBLIC OPTION’ MUST STAY IN REFORM BILL; MEASURE IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT IT

Lincoln vowed to vote against the measure unless the public option is removed. She agreed to vote for the bill in the procedural vote only to move it forward for debate. “Although I don’t agree with everything in this bill,” she said, “I believe it is more important that we begin debate on how to improve the health care system for all Americans.”

Lincoln is not alone. Other moderate-to-conservative Democrats also oppose the public option, most notably Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Max Baucus of Montana and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Independent Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut vowed to join the GOP filibuster of the bill if the public option remains in it.

But liberal Democrats — especially in the House — are equally adamant that a public option is absolutely vital to making health insurance affordable for all Americans. They have drawn a line in the sand, making the public option a “non-negotiable” item that must stay in the bill.

With significant differences between the House and Senate versions, an agreement on the final bill must be reached in the House-Senate Conference Committee. The final bill must then be approved by each chamber before it goes to President Obama for his signature.

Without the public option, the House liberals warn, they won’t allow the measure to reach Obama’s desk. And The ‘Skeeter Bites Report emphatically agrees. Without the public option, no health-reform bill will be worth the paper it’s printed on.

WHY PUBLIC OPTION IS VITAL TO ANY REAL HEALTH REFORM

Too many Americans are literally going broke because they cannot afford the skyrocketing cost of health care.

A growing number of businesses — both large and small — are being forced to stop offering health-care plans to their employees because they can no longer afford the soaring cost, either.

That threatens to prolong the recession for months — even years — by slamming the door on job creation. Consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy, cannot and will not grow back to its pre-recession levels as long as 15 to 20 million Americans remain out of work and another five to ten million fear losing their jobs.

And for Americans in potentially life-threatening situations, the increasing unaffordability of health care can literally be a matter of life or death.

The bottom line is that health-care reform must pass — and it must pass THIS year, WITH a public option — or else.

SINGLE-PAYER WON’T PASS — AND MAY BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ANYWAY

There are, of course, many liberals who are continuing to insist that only a government-run single-payer system will constitute real health reform. But a single-payer system is simply not in the cards.

Even if the votes were there in Congress to pass single-payer, it likely would face a constitutional challenge by the private health insurance industry on the grounds that a single-payer system would drive them out of business, in violation of the Commerce Clause — and possibly the Fifth Amendment — of the Constitution.

With the constitutionality of a single-payer system in doubt, the public option — direct competition between public and private health-insurance providers — is the only practical way to force down the cost of health insurance.

It’s also the only way that low and moderate-income Americans can afford to buy health insurance if carrying such coverage is made mandatory, as automotive insurance is now. If you’re going to make health insurance mandatory for everyone, then just like auto insurance, it must be affordable for everyone.

REID MAY BE FORCED TO INVOKE ‘RECONCILIATION’ — OR ‘GO NUCLEAR’

With Republicans determined to defeat the bill, the standoff within the Democratic ranks may force Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to invoke “reconciliation” — the process allowing a contentious bill to be considered without being subject to filibuster — to ensure the measure’s passage.

Because reconciliation limits debate and amendment, the process empowers the majority party by enabling it to pass the bill by a simple majority. But the process is usually employed only on budget bills, and it’s not clear whether reconciliation can be invoked to pass the health-reform bill.

When Bill Clinton was president, he wanted to use reconciliation to pass his 1993 health care plan, but Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) insisted that the health care plan was out of bounds for a process that is theoretically about budgets. Sixteen years later, however, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), a member of the Senate Finance Committee working on the current health reform bill, said that reconciliation may be used, is an acceptable option, and that he can support it.

Reid may have little choice. The only alternative — as The ‘Skeeter Bites Report pointed out in a previous editorial on October 29 — would be to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” — a change in Senate rules that would do away with the filibuster altogether.

When the Republicans controlled the Senate in 2005, they threatened to employ the “nuclear option” to stop Democratic filibusters of then-President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.

WHY THE FILIBUSTER IS ANTI-DEMOCRACY — AND MUST GO

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report believes that the filibuster has long outlived its usefulness and has degenerated into a tyranny of the intransigent minority, an affront to the democratic principle of majority rule — and is especially despicable given its long history of being used repeatedly and immorally against civil-rights and anti-discrimination legislation.

It was used in the 1940s — and again as recently as 2008 — to block the passage of vitally needed legislation to end employment discrimination. It was used in the 1950s against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It was used in the 1960s against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Democrats were just as wrong in employing the filibuster against President Bush’s judicial nominees in 2005 as the Republicans were in filibustering against President Obama’s first judicial nominee, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton of Indiana, to the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals — a filibuster that was crushed by a 70-29 vote earlier this month.

The judicial filibusters are clearly an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government and should have been struck down.

IF HEALTH REFORM BILL FAILS, REPUBLICANS LIKELY TO GET MOST OF THE BLAME

As the Senate prepares for what is expected to be a weeks-long debate on the health reform bill when it returns from its Thanksgiving recess on November 30, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows Americans remain deeply divided over the measure.

But while a majority of respondents voiced deep concerns about the cost of the reform package that is still being worked out, the Republicans have largely failed to turn public opinion against it, the poll found.

The Post/ABC News poll found that a majority of 53 percent still supports the public option, although that’s down from a 57 percent majority a month ago.

However, support for the public option soars to 72 percent — although down from 76 percent last month — if it is administered by the states, rather than by the federal government, and if it is targeted specifically to Americans who can’t afford private health insurance or who lack access to Medicare or Medicaid.

More bad news for Republicans: a solid 61 percent of respondents found fault with the GOP for “mainly criticizing” and fighting against the Democrats’ plan without putting forth any viable alternative health reform plan of their own.

The Post/ABC News poll differs little from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from last month that showed a nearly two-thirds majority disapproving of how congressional Republicans are handling the issue of health care overhaul.

The same poll also found that nearly four times as many Americans would blame the GOP than would blame the Democrats if the health reform bill failed to pass.

There is no more time for dilly-dallying. As I concluded in my previous editorial on this subject last month, Americans cannot wait another generation for health reform. It must pass, with a public option, this year — or else there will be hell to pay in next year’s midterm elections.

Sincerely,

Skeeter Sanders

Editor & Publisher

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

 Loading ...

Laconia Radio Station Fires Host Doug Lambert for Hurling the Six-Letter F-Bomb at Chairman of Granite State’s Democratic Party — Who is Gay — and Denouncing Him as a ‘Reprobate;’ Conservative Also Loses His Newspaper Column

PLUS: After 40 Years, The Washington Blade — ‘The New York Times of the Gay Media’ — Suddenly Stops the Presses

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Thursday, November 19, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has long been the bete noir of liberals and of Democrats; of feminists and of gays; and in recent months has become anathema to nonwhites.

But a local right-wing radio talk-show host in New Hampshire did something to a local politician last week that even Limbaugh would not have dared to do to Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) — certainly not while his microphone was still turned on:

Hurl an F-bomb at him.

No, not the four-letter F-bomb — the X-rated version that no radio or television personality can legally say on the air. Rather, it was the six-letter F-bomb — the homophobic version that is as highly derogatory to gays as the six-letter N-bomb is to African-Americans.

But that’s exactly what a Laconia, New Hampshire talk-show host did. But while his radio microphone was turned off, an in-studio camera with its own mic was still on — and beaming live pictures and sound onto the Internet.

His tirade not only cost the host his show — the radio station promptly fired him — but he also lost his weekly newspaper column.

A TIRADE OF HOMOPHOBIC INSULTS AT N.H. DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHAIRMAN

Doug Lambert, a conservative activist, had just finished his weekly Saturday-morning radio program, “Meet the New Press,” on station WEMJ in Laconia with his co-host, David “Skip” Murphy. Although Lambert was off the WEMJ airwaves, a live Internet simulcast of his show was still streaming to his Web site, GraniteGrok.com.

Told by Murphy that the Web stream was about to be shut down, Lambert looked into the in-studio camera and let fly with a blistering tirade of anti-gay invectives against Raymond Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

Buckley, who is gay, was being feted by the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization, for his role in the passage of New Hampshire’s same-gender marriage law, which takes effect on New Year’s Day.

It was also Buckley’s 50th birthday.

“Speaking of gays, Happy Birthday, Ray Buckley,” Lambert began, before performing a stereotypically effeminate dance that gay men are alleged to be known for. Afterward, Lambert turned back to the camera and — directly addressing Buckley — said, “Yeah, you faggot! That’s right, I said it and I meant it! You’re a reprobate!”

Lambert continued, “How the people, the Democrats — I think of some of the gray-haired ladies and older people from the old party — would stand behind you is beyond me! You’re a disgrace to yourself, to humanity, to mankind and to your party! Other than that, Happy Birthday, Ray and many more — Not!”

TIRADE DRAWS SWIFT — AND BIPARTISAN — CONDEMNATION

James Pindell, a New Hampshire blogger, watched a video of Lambert’s tirade — which was subsequently pulled from GraniteGrok.com — and posted a transcript on his own Web site, NHPoliticalReport.com. From there, news of Lambert’s remarks spread like wildfire — and drew swift condemnation from across the political spectrum.

Mo Baxley, executive director of the New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition, blasted Lambert and called on former Governor  John Sununu, the state’s Republican Party chairman, to “denounce his despicable comments, pledge never to go on the show, and vow never again to use the issue of equal rights as a weapon to gain political advantage.”

For his part, Sununu issued a statement that branded Lambert’s rant “disgusting, inappropriate, and offensive.” He went on to note that the state GOP, through its communications director, Ryan Williams, denounced the talk-show host’s tirade as “completely inappropriate, offensive and hurtful.

“We strongly condemn the use of such vulgar language and outrageous personal attacks,” Williams said in a statement.

U.S. Representative Paul Hodes (D-New Hampshire) issued his own condemnation of Lambert’s remarks, saying they were “hateful” and “have no place in our public dialogue . . . This isn’t a matter of ‘political correctness.’ This is hate speech and it can incite violence.”

Interestingly, the target of Lambert’s attack has maintained a steadfast public silence. As this editon of The ‘Skeeter Bites Report went to post on Thursday morning, Buckley had made no public comment about Lambert’s remarks.

LAMBERT DUMPED BY WEMJ, LACONIA DAILY SUN, QUITS OWN BLOG

Just hours after making  his anti-gay rant agaisnt Buckley, Lambert posted a statement on GraniteGrok.com in which he apologized to the state Democratic Party chairman. “To be blunt, what I said is something that never should have been said in any kind of a public setting, or, quite frankly, in a private one either,” Lambert wrote. “Being human, and an honest person that is used to freely speaking my mind, my passion got the best of me . . . There is no excuse for the tone or language I used to characterize Ray or anyone for that matter.”

But Lambert’s apology could not save his radio show — or his newspaper column. On Monday, WEMJ announced that it was immediately canceling Lambert’s program. In a statement posted on its Web site, WEMJ, owned by Nassau Broadcasting, “terminated the show based on highly offensive and unacceptable comments made by Mr. Lambert . . .

“Although the comments by Mr. Lambert were not aired [directly] on our station, we find the comments by him to be completely out of line and unacceptable and we will not allow Mr. Lambert the opportunity to continue to air his show on our radio station” said Rob Fulmer, Nassau Broadcasting’s New Hampshire regional manager.

In quick succession, the Laconia Daily Sun, where Lambert wrote a weekly column on Thursdays, announced that it would no longer publish it. Ed Engler, the newspaper’s editor and publisher, said he told Lambert on Monday that he was halting the column, which had been running for more than six years.

By Tuesday, Lambert had given up even on his own blog, announcing on GraniteGrok.com that he was quitting to devote his time “in prayer and reflection, looking inward to the unhealthy malice in my heart, for which I will ultimately have to face my Maker, begging for His undeserved mercy.”

Lambert asked his readers “for peace and privacy in this matter.”

* * *

THE WASHINGTON BLADE, NATION’S OLDEST GAY NEWSPAPER, SUDDENLY FOLDS AFTER 40 YEARS OF PUBLICATION

For 40 years, The Washington Blade was the newspaper of record if you wanted to know the latest news of the gay and lesbian community in the nation’s capital and around the world.

With its straightforward, no-nonsense, in-depth style of reporting, the Blade built a reputation as “The New York Times of the gay media” — the one gay newspaper that the mainstream media — and much of Washington’s heterosexual society — took seriously.

On Monday, without warning and just weeks after it celebrated its 40th anniversary in October, the Blade abruptly ceased publication — the latest casualty in the worsening economic malaise gripping newspapers, large and small, daily and weekly, all across the nation.

The suddenness of the paper’s demise came as a shock to its nearly two-dozen employees. As they arrived at the Blade’s offices in the National Press Building in downtown Washington Monday morning, they were stunned to be told by an executive of parent company Window Media that the company had filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Act and was shutting down all of its publications — and that staffers had until 3 p.m. to clear out their desks.

NEWSPAPER ITSELF WAS FINANCIALLY HEALTHY, BUT ITS PARENT COMPANY WAS MIRED IN DEBT

Window Media, based in Atlanta, was also closing the Southern Voice of Atlanta, the Houston Voice, the South Florida Blade of Miami and several magazines.

The Blade’s Web site, washingtonblade.com, was also shutting down.

A Window Media spokesman did not disclose a reason for the sudden shutdown, but it had been known for months that the company was saddled with major debts. Ironically, the Blade itself was financially healthy, with a weekly circulation reported at about 25,000 and its average 80- to 100-page issues thick with advertising. Its Web site was even more successful, drawing about a million visitors a month.

“It’s a shock. I’m almost speechless, really,” Lou Chibbaro Jr., a veteran Blade reporter who had worked for the newspaper for more than 30 years, told The Washington Post as he cleared out his desk.

In the course of his long career, Chibbaro covered everything from the early days of what was originally known as the gay liberation movement, to the first gay rights march on Washington in 1979, to the onset of the AIDS crisis, to the current battles over gays in the military and same-gender marriage.

In a reflection of the Blade’s status as a news organization in the nation’s capital, Chibbaro earlier this year became the first reporter for a gay-oriented publication to be given a front-row seat at a White House news conference when President Obama met with reporters on health-care reform.

Founded in October 1969, just four months after the Stonewall Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village that is credited as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, the Blade — originally named The Gay Blade — first rolled off a mimeograph machine as a four-page newsletter.

BLADE EDITOR VOWS TO LAUNCH NEW PAPER WITH BLADE’S STAFF

After 31 years as an independent, locally-owned newspaper, the Blade was purchased by Window Media in 2001. Although the Blade, like many other newspapers across the country, has seen advertising revenues decline in the current recession, it remained profitable, according to publisher Lynn Brown, in an interview that was published in the paper’s 40th anniversary issue in October.

The Blade’s sudden demise came just weeks after The Advocate, the nation’s oldest and largest national gay newsmagazine, also ceased publication. Founded in 1967, the Los Angeles-based magazine was the last surviving publication of its kind that predated the Stonewall Riots.

The Blade’s executive editor, Kevin Naff, said Monday that he hopes to keep its staff together and launch a new weekly newspaper under a different name.  “It will be employee-owned,” Naff told the Post, just as the Blade was for most of its history before its purchase by Window Media.

“We’re not going away.”

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

ACORN Charges Congress Violated Constitution’s Ban on ‘Bills of Attainder’ That Single Out Individuals or Groups for Punishment Without Trial or Judicial Review When Lawmakers Passed GOP-Sponsored ‘Defund ACORN Act’ — Lawsuit is Latest in Community Group’s Aggressive Counterattack Against its Conservative Critics

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, Novembre 16, 2009)

Congress voted in September to withhold all federal funding for the community advocacy group ACORN in the wake of a scandal in which two conservative activists posing as a pimp and underage prostitute secretly videotaped ACORN employees in its Baltimore office that one of the activists admitted was for political reasons.

ACORN promptly sued the activists and the conservative Web site that posted their videotapes for violating a Maryland state law that requires two-party consent for electronic surveillance.

Now ACORN is striking back at Congress with a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of its move to defund the organization, on the grounds that by singling out ACORN, the lawmakers violated a constitutional ban on “Bills of Attainder.”

To read the full story, CLICK HERE.

Right-Wing Hard-Liners Both Inside and Outside the Party — Including the Poobahs of Fox News and Talk Radio, as Well as the ‘Teabaggers’ — Have Rendered the GOP Leadership Impotent and Hijacked the Party, Driving It So Far Rightward That It Cost the Republicans a Congressional Seat They Held For More Than 140 Years; Florida Is Likely Their Next Target

(Photo courtesy Craig Pendleton/University of Maine, Farmington)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Thursday, November 12, 2009)

Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, who led the country through the Civil War, famously said that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was, of course, referring to the nation after the secession of 16 Southern states to the Confederacy.

But who would have thought that, nearly 150 years after he was elected president, Lincoln’s words would apply to the very Republican Party he helped co-found in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 with other anti-slavery expansion activists?

As commentator Cris Sautter writes, the GOP bears no resemblance to the Party of Lincoln and is on the brink of being torn asunder in its own ideological civil war.

For copyright reasons, I cannot post Sautter’s commentary in its entirety on Green Mountain Daily. But I have been granted permission by his publisher to post it as a guest commentary on my blog site, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report, which you can read HERE.