Al Qaeda has officially added President-elect Barack Obama to its enemies list. In the terrorist group’s first video message to Obama since his election, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s number two, calls Obama a “House Negro” who “claims” to be Christian to be elected to high office. The new video says that because Obama has chosen to support Israel and has threatened to strike Pakistan and send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, he has decided to continue “the crimes of the American crusade.”

This is militant Islam’s version of the welcome mat. And it shows that Al-Qaeda has apparently taken Obama at his word when the president-elect vowed to “defeat” the militant Taliban and organizations like Al Qaeda and hunt down Usama bin Laden.

…

Zawahiri also says that by choosing to abandon the faith of his Muslim father in favor of Christianity and to continue waging America’s War on Terror –- albeit by different methods –- Obama has agreed to “pray the prayer of the Jews.” As such, Zawahiri says, Obama has become “captive” to the “same criminal American mentality towards the world and towards Muslims.”

In case anyone misses the point of this diatribe (widely distributed today on Arab television networks), the video portrays Obama wearing a yarmulke — a Jewish skullcap.

Now it’s just a countdown before some right-wing jerkoff makes the claim that this is all “reverse psychology” and Al Qaeda just released that tape to trick everyone into thinking they’re enemies when in reality Obama funded the tape and after it finished filming they went off and had a few cups of tea together and made sweet sweet love in the back of the cave or something.

By now everyone and their brother on Lieberman’s side has said something along the lines of “but if you ignore the foreign policy hawkishness he’s as liberal as they come!” That may be debatable, but we certainly do all agree that Joementum’s abrupt hard right turn in terms of the War on Terror stands in rather stark contrast to just about every other vote he’s placed. Like so many others, I was ready to condemn his actions without asking a simple question: why was he doing that?

Lieberman is not, historically, a foreign policy or national security hawk. If you look at his record at OnTheIssues, elsewhere he’s a pretty moderate Democrat with liberal leanings. To call him a far-left liberal who flipped a 180 isn’t exactly accurate, but he’s definitely always been on the blue side. So it’s time to look at who Joe Lieberman is.

Holy Joe was elected to the Senate in 1989. Most of us only know of him after the 2000 election, but he’d been around for 11 years prior to that and didn’t exactly have a record of American imperialism worldwide. But there’s one thing to remember about Lieberman: he is a very, very, very pro-Israel politician. He’s one of those guys who supported Israel’s monstrous assault in Gaza in 2006 and got a hell of a lot of money from pro-Israel groups in his fight against Lamont. Jewish himself, his allegiances aren’t hard to understand or to predict (note: I’m not in any way knocking the guy for being Jewish).

Enter 9/11 and the sudden perception of impending doom at the hands of Islamic radicals. For a guy like Lieberman, that’s just unacceptable. Under no circumstances is he willing to let Israel die under a Muslim sword, nor will he allow the west to be under attack from those same people. Wherever that leads us, there we must go. No taking chances. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, these all represent dire threats to the nation of Israel, and Israel must be protected at all costs.

His own party is taking the, well, typically liberal stance and saying we have to rationally examine the situation rather than trying to squash out every angry guy with a Koran, a stance which strikes Joe as weak or soft. However, the other side appears to be willing to take the “tough” stand against these maniacs, so he bites the bullet and sits with them, assailing Democrats for not funding our troops and not wanting to see the fight to the end.

This is the kind of war Lieberman, like his allies in this matter, does see as all-encompassing and paramount. He’s one of those guys who sees the entire nation of Israel as his people’s land. Negotiations suggesting going back to the 1967 borders are unacceptable, those Palestinians should find their own country. Every Muslim lunatic with a bomb in a backpack represents a mortal danger.

In light of that, it isn’t hard to figure out why he’s been so “willing” to throw his party under the bus and campaign for John McCain, who Lieberman likely sees as the arch nemesis to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, as opposed to Barack Obama, who may even be Muslim himself and who knows if he was even born in this country. Everything is coming through the lens of protecting Israel, and the world at large, from the Islamic threat.

So maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong. I don’t know. It shows a lack of loyalty, a lack of consideration for his colleagues, and a willingness to forego all else over one issue. But if I’m right, or more accurately if Ryan is, then Lieberman sees the issue as so critical that everything else can be compromised for it, and the political situation just happened to fall into his lap. He used his leverage as a means to an end rather than simply to enjoy a cozy position in the Senate.

This might explain why Obama and others haven’t been so eager to set Lieberman on fire. They know Joe, they understand how he operates better than any of us do. So having lost the election, maybe he’s now resigned to an Obama presidency and rather than being political (as we had all thought he was doing), he’s going to do what he can with the cards he’s been dealt and fight for the Obama presidency to keep him, us, and Israel safe from what he sees as the world’s biggest danger.

It might also explain his dogged fight in 2006. At the time, many of us saw it as a situation where the guy simply wasn’t willing to let go of his seat. However, if he saw himself as Israel’s only friend in the Democratic party (and it sure seems like those pro-Israel groups thought so), he wasn’t about to let Ned Lamont sweep in and take his seat. Especially not when the main issue Lamont was championing was that we should pull out of Iraq.

Lieberman didn’t investigate Bush because he saw the president and the Republicans as allies in the fight against Islamic terrorism. If that’s the case, he’s not going to start trying to tear Obama down over political reasons, that won’t help the situation as he sees it. So it’s possible that Lieberman, now that the chips are down and Obama’s in the White House, has no intention of doign anything but working with the next administration, and once again his party, to the best of his ability.

I’m still on the fence myself, but as a soft-hearted liberal hippie, I’m always inclined to believe the best in people. Plus, again, remember the Razor credo itself.

The soup du jour is the 42-13 vote to allow Lieberman to stay in the caucus as well as keep his chair on the Homeland Security Committee. Let me clarify something rather important: I do not care whether or not he caucuses with the Democrats. That’s Joe’s decision. What chuffs me is that he keeps his chair on the HSC. A second point: this is not about “punishment”, this is about the fact that we simply cannot trust Joe to do what’s best for the party or for the country. Just what’s best for Joe.

Then we have this BS:

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was very angry by Lieberman’s actions but that “we’re looking forward, we’re not looking back.”

Added Reid: “This was not a time for retribution, it was a time for moving forward on the problems of this country.”

…

“There are some (statements) that I made that I wish I had not,” Lieberman told reporters. “In the heat of campaigns, that happens to all of us, but I regret that. And now it’s time to move on.”

Why is it that whenever people in politics talk about “moving forward”, it means completely forgetting everything that happened yesterday? I don’t get to “move forward” when I seriously aggrieve my friends. If I were to crash my car while driving drunk, I couldn’t tell the judge I just want to “move on” and that “this is no time to look backward, I have to take care of my family.” Every time the Democrats talk about looking ahead and not looking behind, it means someone’s getting off scot free.

Expect now also to hear that the “influence” of the “liberal bloggers” has waned, or cheering that Democrats aren’t “beholden” to the “radical left”. It’s pure hogwash. This is proof that Democrats simply have no spine. When push comes to shove, they’re afraid at seeming too “liberal”. Whereas Republicans are now blaming McCain for not being far-right enough, Democrats are pushing away from the left, and the both of them are completely wrong in their assessments.

The reason people like Bill O’Reilly claim the United States is a center-right nation is because our politicians push that way. Our Democrats are terrified of being placed next to liberals like Markos and Michael Moore, but far-right screechers like Bill Kristol, Hannity, or Ann Coulter are downright exalted by Republicans who are happy to legitimize them and their radical ideologies. The very name “George Soros” is enough to have Democrats sputtering that they have no involvement with him, but do any Republicans care about being pictured with Rupert Murdoch or Richard Mellon Scaife? Not at all.

That’s the problem. Democrats won’t stand up to the conservatives. They’re more than happy to feed into the lie that us liberal bloggers are wackadoodles that are far outside the mainstream, at least unless there’s an election nearby. Then suddenly they loooove the John Aravosises and Atrioses of the world. But then when the smoke clears, they go back to scraping right under the false assumption that doing so will be the politically safe thing to do, regardless of what’s right.

Lieberman stays, will undoubtedly launch investigations on Obama, and the Democrats are calling it a victory. Hanlon is depressed, folks

The Republicans did this to themselves, yet a convenient amnesia can be found in conservatives’ post-Election Day soul searching. There’s endless hand-wringing about Bush and McCain blunders and Abramoff-Stevens corruption, but there’s barely any mention of the nasty cultural brawls that defined the G.O.P. campaign narrative this year as the party clung bitterly once more to its 40-year-old “Southern strategy.”

…

Yet the G.O.P. really does believe that it’s all about perception. That’s why its 2000 convention offered a stage full of break dancers and gospel singers, wildly outnumbering the black delegates in the audience. Bush and Karl Rove regarded diversity as a public-relations issue to be finessed with marketing. Round up some black extras! Sell “compassionate conservatism” by posing Bush incessantly with black schoolchildren! Problem solved!

It is all about perception with these people, but Frank skirts around one crucial thing without really catching it.

In the immediate followup to McCain’s electoral obliteration, Rove and other right-wing talking heads immediately gave a crashingly ludicrous analysis: the problem wasn’t that Americans rejected conservatism, the problem was that McCain wasn’t conservative enough. That’s why the squawkboxes and Bill Kristols of the nation are heralding Sarah Palin as though she’s going to bring in a new era of conservative domination.

Either these people don’t read polls at all or they’ve deluded themselves into thinking that every poll in existence is liberally biased. Sarah Palin “enjoyed” the worst approval of any Vice Presidential candidate in history, a number that got worse not thanks to negative stories in the news (few people cared about Troopergate, and generally her strength as a woman with a disabled child was the focus of things), but simply from seeing her. Every interview she did, every speech she gave, every time she herself showed up and opened her mouth, public opinion turned against her.

Far from being the salvation of McCain’s ticket, she may be the reason he lost. Poll after poll showed that the selection of Sarah Palin made a majority (or at least a plurality) of people worried about McCain’s judgment. Simply put: people do not like Sarah Palin.

On the flip-side, liberal ideals are enjoying an almost overwhelming popularity. One of the problems liberal moonbats have had has been that as we watch polls show huge support for lefty platforms, our Democrats just aren’t pursuing them. People have wanted us out of Iraq for years, they support higher minimum wage, universal health care, keeping Social Security strong, regulations on corporations, getting away from oil, and a more even-handed approach to Israel. Yet when a Congressman proposes any of those ideas the pundits immediately sideline him/her as a “radical”.

I’ve written on multiple occasions that the difference between liberals mad at their politicians and conservatives mad at theirs is that liberals get mad when their politicians don’t even attempt to push liberal policies, while conservatives get mad when theirs push for them but then say they “did it wrong” when things go badly. The problem is never the policies, it’s either inept politicians or forces outside of their control.

The most recent and most salient example is the economic collapse. As McCain’s numbers slipped, many talking heads adopted the line that it was “unfortunate” for McCain that the economy was falling apart, that McCain’s campaign was a “victim” of an external factor that sabotaged his hopes for victory. The same was often said about the “Bush factor”, that McCain had an uphill battle simply because Bush was so unpopular.

These assertions were made with absolutely no thought toward the idea that those situations came about because of Republican policies. The economy didn’t collapse because things were socialized and high taxes stunted growth. Bush wasn’t unpopular because he tried to legalize gay marriage and supported opening stem-cell research further. The Republicans weren’t victims of an unfortunate political landscape, they became poisoned by the fruits of their labor. Bush’s popularity and the economic meltdown were direct results of right-wing policies, and the reason McCain had to distance himself from the president and pump his “maverick” image was because he knew that people did not want another conservative president. End of story.

If conservatives want to make Sarah Palin head of the GOP in 2012, let ‘em. I look forward to president Obama smiling in a debate and saying “You know this feels awfully familiar. In 2008 they said neither of us had enough experience. Only now I’ve been president for four years and brought us out of the quagmire caused by the policies you wanted to continue.”

The California secretary of state should refuse to allow the state’s 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until President-elect Barack Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office, alleges a California court petition filed on behalf of former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others.

The legal action today is just the latest is a series of challenges, some of which have gone as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, over the issue of Obama’s status as a “natural-born citizen,” a requirement set by the U.S. Constitution.

WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi even traveled to Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama’s birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn’t ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

Oh, you mean like the copy that FactCheck.org saw?!?

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it’s stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

Honestly, I can’t even put enough words together.

Held a week and a half after the election, it was impossible to avoid musing over what I was watching and the Proposition 8 vote out in California. I was sitting in the front row, watching as my cousin solidified his union with the love of his life, dedicated himself to her, and she to him. They exchanged vows, put on the rings, kissed, and then we went over to the reception where more celebration followed. Emotions ran high, there were a lot of tears and snapping of pictures, plus that hilarious moment when they smash cake into each others’ faces.

It left me thinking about what really was lost when Prop 8 passed. There tend to be two groups of people who vote against gay marriage: there are those who are just monumentally anti-gay who yearn for the days when if you found two guys in bed you stoned them to death; then there are those who have no problem with gays, but prickle at the idea of marriage and bend over backwards saying they should have all the same rights as straight couples, just not the marriage bit.

Sitting in that room, I realized that it isn’t about “having the same rights”. The issue of marriage isn’t because gays want to be able to save money by filing a joint tax return or put one another on their insurance cards. It’s not about simply formally recognizing that person A and person B are considered a legal “unit”. As far as I know, no one gets married because they want an easier tax load. I may be wrong, and if you can find more than a small handful of cases where friends who didn’t love each other got married just for convenience, let me know.

I looked around during the ceremony, watching the parents of the bride and groom with tears coming down their faces. I watched the bride choke up while saying the words “I thee wed”. I clapped and cheered with everyone else when the bride and groom kissed, and laughed along with the toast given by his best friend. I couldn’t avoid getting moved when I heard Sensei Stultz describe that we weren’t just watching them take each other’s names, but that they were becoming one with each other.

What Proposition 8 and laws like it exclude gays from having isn’t about “legal status”, it’s that they’ve been robbed the opportunity to have that moment of pure joy and the dedication of love for each other, and to have it openly recognized as real. Preventing gays from marrying is saying “your love doesn’t count.” It’s saying that we might be willing to give you some of the same legal rights, but the love is different. It’s somehow less than, illegitimate, unnatural, or publicly unacceptable.

I wasn’t just watching two people go into a courthouse and have a form stamped that said “yep, yer married now,” it was a lot more than that. They wouldn’t have accepted it without the ceremony and the word “marriage”, why should anyone else have to?

You might say “But Hanlon, they can have a private ceremony if they want, it just won’t be legally recognized.” Fair point, but that still means their love and dedication aren’t considered as strong or real as everyone else’s. Yes, I’m sure it is a bother not to be able to file joint tax returns or get survivor benefits through Social Security, but is that why straight couples get married?

Someone once told me that the fight for marriage equality in fact does gays a disservice because it wastes energy that could be spent making sure they get power of attorney and all those other legal benefits, as though that’s what the fight was all about. It seems to me that such comments just proved my point, as the implication was that having their love recognized as equal wasn’t possible, so they should just be happy to have similar legal standing.

I sat fiddling with my tie because I almost never wear one, and I was touched by the looks on everyone’s faces. That kind of happiness at standing up in front of the world and saying “we are one soul” and having the national government say in return “yes, yes you are.” I could not, for the life of me, understand why anyone should not be allowed to have that.

Is it because they honestly believe it delegitimizes their own marriages? If so, why? Again, I come to the same conclusion. These people think gay love “doesn’t count”, it just falls under that umbrella of “unnatural stuff” that encompasses bestiality and pedophilia, and so to call that love on the level of the “pure, wholesome” love between a man and a woman means we as a nation (if not a species) have somehow lost our way. These are usually the same who think two friends would somehow be willing to get married just for the legal benefits.

To me, that logic simply doesn’t make sense. After all, what is “natural”? If we consider natural to be “that which happens inherently”, then not only doesn’t the argument work, but everything is natural. That’s just how you got wired. If we mean “to propagate the species”, then while the man-woman attraction counts, so does incest and marrying children as long as we’re talking opposite sex and fertile.

I’ve even seen articles arguing that the genetic “downsides” of incest are overblown and it’s quite genetically safe for a brother and sister to get married (I can’t find the article and I can only do so much googling before I worry about who might be watching my search history). If that’s truly the case and a child born of sibling union is genetically fine, then the linking of gay marriage to incest is nearly backwards. Gay marriage, that between consenting and genetically separate adults, is closer to “normal” marriage than it is to incest (to say nothing of bestiality), and in fact the latter two are closer than the former.

If religious roots are your basis of choice, then we’re unfortunately left with the old cliche of asking why it’s just that passage people care about and miss the parts about marrying your brother’s wife after he dies or stoning children who cheek their parents. No, the religious justification came after the fact. People who find gays gross use the religious verses that agree and sputter about “interpretation” when it comes to everything else.

At this point it can no longer be argued that the love between any two consenting adults is equal. Stopping anyone from having the freedom, yes the freedom, to stand proudly at the altar and have us as a nation confirm that their love is just as meaningful as everyone else’s is nothing short of heartless. End of story.

Long ramble, I know, but I haven’t had a good one in a while and this one really hit me.

Well, funny story (as the updated post indicates). It turns out that was all crap, the insider was a character invented by a pair of hoaxsters, and the media all fell for it.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

He had a blog, a page for the fake institute he was a fellow of, and YouTube videos. Not a bad ruse.

However, it’s odd that the McCain camp didn’t pipe up and point out that they had no idea who this guy was. You’d think even the anti-Palin brigade would have shot the story down fairly early on. Unless the team was just that disorganized that a guy with a fake name could claim he was part of the inner circle and no one was confident enough to say otherwise.

Not to mention, what does that say of Sarah Palin? It’s bad enough when someone leaks a bogus story like “Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent”, but it’s far worse when people believe it. She likes to talk about how she’s got the support of “Real America” or some crap like that, but the fact is people think she’s dumb enough that the Africa as continent story was plausible.