Perhaps this is a lesson to all of us about the toxicity of heavy metal music. Aging rocker Dave Mustaine of Megadeth remarked at a concert on August 7:
Back in my country, my president … he’s trying to pass a gun ban. So he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border … Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there … and the beautiful people at the Sikh temple. I don’t know where I’m gonna live if America keeps going the way it’s going because it looks like it’s turning into Nazi America.
Mustaine is also a birther, having told Alex Jones on his InfoWars program: “With all of the proof about his birth certificate being fake. And you see the signs in Kenya1 that say ‘the birthplace of Barack Obama.’ Hello?! C’mon, guys. How stupid are we right now?”
In an unrelated story, a new video from some former special ops soldiers including one Ben Smith questions Obama’s national security policy, inviting comparisons with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 election. Of course, special ops soldiers aren’t trained to be national security experts, but it sounds impressive. Obama’s record combatting terrorism sounds impressive too.
1The Obama road sign photos are fakes.
Obama staged the recent shootings to gain support for a gun ban? None of the pre-existing gun violence was good enough?
Yes and he immediately called for new gun control laws (NOT).
It’s interesting that Mustaine mentions moving to Singapore. I’m currently reading a book about the founding of the British colony in Singapore: Raffles of Singapore.
Singapore has stricter restrictions on firearms ownership than the US. Sheriff Joe’s 50 cal. would be illegal in Singapore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_law#Singapore
they really believe all this stuff, remember the gun stores running out of stock right after Obama was elected, they had to buy before Obama banned guns.
They’re dancing on a string. It’s an exact replay of the Clinton years.
The Special Forces bit is just lame. It’s an exact replay of the Swift Boat year.
What i’m waiting for is some guy claiming to be the guy that shot Bin Laden to pop up and claim that Obama ordered the rest of his team wiped out to keep what really happened that night SEKRIT. Even better if he produces the shovel they used to bury the bodies.
How would one go about staging these two tragic events?
Dr. Conspiracy, I ran across a birther name I’d never heard before. A retired Army General Paul Valley.
http://www.conservativerefocus.com/blog5.php/2011/06/14/birther-update-from-major-general-paul-vallely-retired-cia-agents-say-obama-s-birth-certificate-is-fraudulent
It’s being reported over at Mediaite that he’s one of the powers that be, behind the new Swift Boat effort.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/will-cain-defends-swiftboat-style-ad-slamming-president-obama-over-osama-bin-laden-raid/
I’m afraid that things are going to get really, really fuguly this election year. Any thoughts/insight would be appreciated.
Thanks….
ps, I did a search on his name, but didn’t find anything.
And soon after, they were claiming that the shortage was caused because Obama ordered the destruction of all of the ammo. There was a minor snafu from a bureaucratic misunderstanding on the rules of selling surplus but it was quickly fixed and never caused any real shortage (and was actually a GWB era rule).
I fear the NRA leadership and others are using this to rally gun enthusiasts to support the one side, not because of protecting gun rights but for other political purposes.
Paul E. Vallely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_E._Vallely#Support_of_Lieutenant_Colonel_Lakin_birther_claims
Majority Will
Thanks, I was aware of the [Lakin] case, just never drilled down enough to look at all the flack that was being put out by the birfers to try and divert the UCMJ missile that was going to blow [Lakin] up and send him to Leavenworth. This was the first I’d heard of these ‘generals’ though. Just dropped by to see if Dr. C had more info.
‘BATMAN’ MASSACRE VICTIM To Megadeth Singer:
Don’t BLAME Obama!
(excerpt) Megadeth singer Dave Mustaine is an idiot … because Barack Obama is not to blame for the Aurora massacre … so says one of the people who was shot in the theater that night.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/16/batman-megadeth-singer-barack-obama-victim-carli-richards-dave-mustain/?adid=hero4
O.K.
It’s not surprising that Farah’s b.s. factories like wnd.com and the Orwellian “Western Center for Journalism” keep oozing up in so many of these birther bigot delusions.
Your problem with Google hits is that you misspelled the name. It’s Maj. General (retired) Paul Vallely, and he goes way back as an analyst on Fox News and a writer for WorldNetDaily. At one time he was on the witness list for Terry Lakin. One of his nuttier claims is that the CIA have determined Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/major-general-vallely-cia-agents-say-obama-birth-certificate-fraudulent/
Yep. Paul Vallely has been a hard core Birther activist, pretty much since the early days of Birtherism.
No surprise that he would be involved with such a shameful attempt to put up military patsy’s to bring shame on their former careers, for nothing more than the deceitful propaganda attempt to come up with a 2012 “Swift Boating” style meme…
Reprehensible, but I am not at all surprised that these desperate hate-driven liars are steeping so low. Whatever integrity and honor they once had has been traded away by their own personal choices, in the madness induced by embracing hate.
After all, WND’s “Swift Boat” stunt attempt with Arpaio has been a complete failure, so these desperate smear merchants had to make up a new angle to attempt, eventually.
I expect the outright lies and smear attempts to continue to get much worse as the election approaches.
In terms of David Mustaine, he is no longer the same person that he used to be. He’s one of those people who terribly messes up their own life to such an extent, that they only become “Born Again” as both a crutch and excuse to cover for why they are so messed up.
To me, those are the worst ways that someone finds religion, as their own inability to manage their own broken life and habits, often quickly leads to abusing religion and arriving at warped, irrational and rigid justifications in its name.
For so many others, religion can provide a positive framework and outlet for them to deal with life, seek inspiration and demonstrate compassion to their fellow being.
But the types like Mustaine are so internally damaged and selfish, that these positive aspects don’t seem to take hold and they seem to cling to only the corrupting influences of rigid control mechanisms aspects to organized religion, without reflection upon the root philosophical underpinnings behind it.
I realize that Heavy Metal is not to everyone’s taste, but it is a valid music form and Mustaine WAS one of the greats in that industry. His past catalog of hits will always command great respect within that realm of music. But he is no longer the same person or artist that was able to generate those hits, even if he is still capable of playing them and trading off his own past. He’s become a hopelessly paranoid crazy person and that certainly has changed his artistic ability, in terms of his new material. When he goes off on these recent rants, the overwhelming reaction from within his fanbase has been extremely negative towards his new found extremist nut-baggery.
As Fat Freddy remarked…Remember uh uh uh Peed Skills people.
To a large extent, the swift boaters have already won:
As this article about CNN demonstrates…
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/16/this-is-cnns-soft-birtherism/189387
…the Right has already managed to convince a lot of people that, despite every evidence to the contrary, Obama has not released his bc.
Like Jon Stewart, I blame your media.
“I’d advise Mitt to release 10 years of tax returns when Obama releases 10 years of birth certificates.” — Alex Castellanos
LOL! I have no clue who that is, but what a fail!
I do not agree that the new crop of swift boaters have won. In this case, Obama is the incumbent. He has the bully pulpit. Further, they are attempting to undermine two items, the LFBC release and the hit on Osama, that were highly publicized matters of public attention just last year, rather than the popularly unknown matter of a senator’s military career.
This drivel is pap for the partisan base. A rhetorical booster shot. Have to keeep The Fathful innoculated.
____________
I used to think that Living By Faith was a beautiful hymn. Thinking of it in the context of the Deep Reds is disturbing.
Obama has already released more birth certificates (two) than Mitt has released tax returns (part of one missing schedules, plus an “estimate.”).
I agree with your assessment. This is the silly season of desperation GOP slurs attack attempts. Just because they are slinging poo, doesn’t mean than anybody but their own ODS base is buying it.
Expect it to rachet up, as that is what desperation does. But don’t expect that to translate into new people buying into it that much. There are very few voters who are truly available as “swing votes” this cycle, compared with history. That is because the hyper-partisan rancor, in a constant 24×7 media for the past 4 years, pretty much reached its saturation point in framing Obama quite some time ago. Everyone but the ODS crowd mostly tunes it out.
It is simply the Law of Diminishing Returns, playing itself out.
Good points.
The difference though is that the media is still talking about Romney’s taxes. Personally, I think the tax return issue is very cynically political by Obama’s campaign- but hey politics is politics.
I think that Romney has no obligation to release more tax returns and part of me applauds his refusal to bow down to the demands for them(like I enjoyed Obama ignoring Birthers). But this is an issue that Obama is able to keep pounding on- and frankly Romney is ceding him the stage on this issue, and Obama is able to talk about this rather than the economy.
Trying to equate Romney releasing his tax returns with President Obama’s releasing his already released (the only President to do this, by the way) birth certificate is ridiculous and if this is what republicans hang their hat on to try to win this election, I saw there’s no need for President Obama and Michelle to go anywhere near their sock drawer to start to clean it out……..they have a nice long four years before that.
…stupid birthers and desparate republicans………..
Mustaine suggests that all evil during Obama’s tenure are directly his fault.
If that’s so, how did we ever get the Oklahoma bombing, the first WTC bombing, Whitman in the Texas tower, the Saint Valentines massacre, David Koresh, Manson and hundreds of others.
Dave appears to make the argument that everyone else is sane BUT Obama.
New player takes the field!
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/17/anti_obama_navy_seal_leader_i_m_a_birther
Larry Bailey, says he’s a 27 year SEAL veteran, and a birther.
And he’s a special birther, of the type discussed earlier: he believes Frank Marshall Davis is Obama’s father, and that Obama wasn’t born in the US.
Oh, and he’s not really a “new” player: he was tied up in “Vietnam Vets for the Truth,” a fellow traveler organization with the swiftboaters.
Reprehensible traitors to everything their service stood for!!!
This particular RWNJ “Swift Boating” smear is not going to fly and is already blowing up in their faces. Take a look at the overwhelmingly disgusted comments. The ire is primarily directed TOWARDS these groups and their shameful smears, NOT Obama.
because in 2004 the smear merchants displayed some originality and had the element of surprise.
but today, after spending eight years analyzing it to death, there’s nothing new about it. from the moment this latest gambit was thrown down, headlines recognized it immediately and have already inseparably conjoined it to the 2004 ploy. and this time the targets are fully engaged and on the offensive. so unless there’s some inventive new twist to this sequel, “swiftboat 2: the quickening” is going to turn out to be another big expensive flop.
Good points. I completely concur.
The birthers that push both the “Someone else is the father” AND “He was born somewhere else!” angles at the same time baffle me.
If someone else had been the father, why travel ten thousand miles to another country to give birth? It pretty much has to be one, or the other. Both makes no sense.
It’s like the Freepers who say “Obama is a Nazi Stalinist Marxist Socialist Fascist Corporatist Anerica-Hating Muslim Gay Athiest” and I’m thinking, I realize these people feel like they have to attribute every possible attribute they consider “bad” to the President, but some of those are mutually exclusive.
Agreed, In 2004 the Kerry campaign was slow to respond to the Swift Boaters and the mainstream media gave the claims a lot of coverage. The Obama campaign was prepared in 2008 and responded to smears immediately.
Many birthers seem to be ordering their conspiracies a la carte, e.g., “For starters I’ll have your ‘Malcolm X is Obama’s Dad,’ then the ‘Phony SSN’ and for the main course . . . ‘Secret Muslim, Secret Marxist.’ Now my wife will have ‘Birth in Kenya,’ followed by ‘Never Went to Columbia’ and she’ll top it off with the ‘Forged B.C.’ And for the whine . . . how about ‘Nobody Pays Attention to the Cold Case Posse.'”
Well, in 2008, many of us said that the election of the nation’s first black president would cause the bigots and RWNJ’s collective “heads to explode”. Of course, at the time, most of us meant that as merely a figure of speech.
However, I think that is what has actually happened to some extent with a lot of these folks – his election really DID cause something to snap inside. Their brains have, in a sense, “broken”, as a result of a scenario that simply “does not compute” to them… and their cancerous diet of constant hate has only served to further rot their minds and cause them to devolve into real madness…
The tax return gambit is a dangerous one. A person like Mr. Romney won’t have your typical 1040/W2/1099 tax return. He will have capital gains related to an enormously complex collection of different investments and business interests. I would not be surprised if too much disclosure could jeopardize the interests of other parties.
I am not convinced that the people demanding his tax returns really know what they are asking for, or what they expect it to show. I also think the strategy is going to backfire. Mr. Romney is subject to a 15% capital gains rate, and claims to have paid 13%. I would like to know how he gets that one or two percent edge, but I know enough about tax accounting to realize that the audit would take longer than we have between now and the election. (People are simply not visualizing the size of the file room here… they want to see a 1040 with a W2 form… and that’s not what Mr. Romney has…)
I believe that Mr. Romney’s refusal to comply with demand for his tax returns is helping his campaign, and that he is well aware of it. His opposition makes these demands, and the underlying premise is that evidence of a crime will be discovered in the tax returns. When he does release them, and it shows that (a) he has paid breathtaking sums in actual dollars and (b) he has broken no laws, it will help him even more.
He can already depend on 60 million votes, no matter what his campaign does, or doesn’t do. Releasing tax returns, or not releasing them, will not change the votes of either his supporters or the “not Obama” voters.
On the other hand, if he is hiding something, I suspect he is not hiding it from “The American People” or the IRS. I suspect he is hiding from The Church. If he paid proper tithes, the dollar amounts will be huge, painting a picture of a religious fanatic. If he didn’t pay proper tithes, does he fear the Church’s enforcers?
Yeah I hadn’t thought of that. You set up a conspiracy and stage event X to justify policy Y. Then you stage event X but completely forget about policy Y. It’s like Truthers who claim 9/11 was a government plot to get justification for the Iraq War, except we waited a year and a half and went to Afghanistan first.
Mr. Mustaine, if you have evidence of a crime and you do not take it to law enforcement authorities, you run the risk of becoming an accessory to the crime. So do you have evidence that President Obama is connected to the Aurora shootings, or did you make a false accusation of this crime?
My local 2nd amendment fear-brigade assures me that the simple fact that President Obama hasn’t already sent the blue hats to commandeer their guns, ammo, and belly-button-lint-ball collections* is dead-solid proof that he intends to do just that….he’s merely biding his time until after his re-election. That’s when the really bad stuff is gonna happen.
*(these are left over from Y2K, supposedly to be used for starting fires after gas and electricity are no longer available. some are quite large at this point.) (but seriously, I have a brother-in-law who really was saving his dryer lint for that exact purpose) (no, really)
Such things are really nothing more than the irrational paranoia version of “any day now….”
On one hand, they “fear” such an event happening….but really, their fixation on “it” also reveals that perversely, they fantasize and “wish” that it would happen. I think they pretend that they can finally be “heroes” if only the current world was wiped away and gave them a fresh start in the post-crisis “revolution”…
I consider such paranoid wishfulness to be a form of mental sickness.
Speaking of has-been musicians who make deluded comments about the President:
“Country music singer and incendiary conservative Hank Williams, Jr. is once again saying controversial things about President Obama. Des Moines Register reporter Joe Lawler writes Williams told a crowd at the Iowa State Fair Friday that the president isn’t a Christian and that he ‘hates’ America.
‘We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the US and we hate him!’ Williams yelled to the crowd.”
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/hank-williams-jr-obama-is-muslim-who-hates
Cringe!
Yep, never mind that if Frank Marshall were his father, that blows away the “he can’t be NBC because his father was a British citizen” crowd.
this isn’t simple deluded commentary — this is an ogre preaching hate to a crowd.
it’s textbook hatemongering. (i’ll bet he hates textbooks too.)
if he can get booked after this anywhere that isn’t a klan rally, he should be happy — he’ll have gotten “his” country back.
Artur C. Clarke believed that religion, or rather faith, was a form of mental sickness or more accurately a throwback to an earlier evolutionary stage when it served a purpose which it no longer does (a little like the appendix).
I have to admit that — while I’m unable to draw a precise line between the two — which in any event would vary according to who would draw it — there does seem to be a difference between reasonable competing worldviews and crazy ones, which deny reality.
As we often say here, one may perfectly object to Obama’s policies and want to vote him out, but you’ve got to be rational about it. Those who call him a Muslim Marxist etc. are just kooks.
Yes, I agree . . .
I know the type! I’m always amused by people who prepare for the coming “troubles” by hoarding food or — as in your relative’s case, dryer lint — but haven’t thought about stocking up on the perspecription drugs that keep their heart rate low, their blood sugar in check, and their arteries clear. Maybe they plan to rob the druggist?
They like to think just because they invent a new slur that that makes it valid.
Like Liberal Fascist, the two are mutually exclusive, they can put the two terms together all they want, but in the end it still does not make it valid.
They are desperate and flailing, they know Obama is going to win just like he did against McCain.
When they are routed again this year will their conclusion, again, be that they were not Conservative enough?
Will the entire party lurch even further to the Right?
Or will they finally realize that it is the conservatives that are killing their party and their chances of ever winning the Presidency?
These devout “Christians” sure do hold a lot of stock in the Mayan Calendar that they think predicts the world will end on December 21st of this year.
Last I checked the Mayans were Pagans, not Christians.
Dave Mustaine’s brain is barely functioning because of his years of drug abuse and sexual deviancy.
He is the definition of Delusional.
Agreed!
Well said!
Some good points. I hadn’t thought of the size of his tax returns. I am not sure that his refusal to release them is really helping him- his base won’t care but it may affect the independents who are still ‘wobblers'(how can anyone still really be on the fence between Romney and Obama?).
But I applaud Romney for not releasing his returns. While it may be relevant to want to see his returns- Romney is not obligated to release them. After months of telling Birthers that no- the Constitution doesn’t say that Presidents have to release their college records, I am fine with a candidate saying that he will not release personal information.
I see the issue of both tax returns and medical records as slightly different than other personal records.
For one thing, there is a fairly established maxim in running for President to release those two types of information and some fair reasoning about why such information is part of the vetting process for high office.
So I see requests for that type of information as very different from the crazy list of irrelevant personal details that Birthers demand.
A thought that I saw on a different blog about Romney’s tax returns. In 2008 the Swiss gave in to US pressure and agreed to inform the US of Swiss bank accounts owned by US Citizens. As a result, in 2008 or 2009 there was a tax amnesty for taxpayers with overseas accounts, primarily those in Swiss accounts. If they paid up the taxes due over the prior 7 years and interest and penalties, and AMENDED THOSE RETURNS, the US would not prosecute them criminally when it got the information from the Swiss. If they didn’t pay up, then the US would prosecute for tax evasion and tax fraud. So, the thought is that Romney, like several thousand others, paid up the back taxes, interest and penalties and filed amended returns and was granted AMNESTY.
Romney, now running for Pres. Realizes that if he releases amended returns showing that he had not reported the income from Swiss accounts and had, in fact, received AMNESTY, he would be dead in the water with everyone.
That is just one of a whole host of plausible speculative real concerns that Romney’s taxes might reveal.
In addition to the tax amnesty possibility, there is the possibility of his Mormon church being upset, as they expect a certain fixed tithe, and it is quite possible that his creative accounting practices have concealed a lot of money that the church would expect from him.
Today, another possibility has come to light – that the returns could be concealing voter fraud:
http://news.yahoo.com/suspects-deputy-killings-linked-extremists-005244499.html
Then there is the full littany of more standard concerns about what his records show, which is unseemly or would appear to most Americans as “unfair”, even if they are legal loopholes, in terms of his various off-shore accounts, his investments, the tax rates he paid and the deductions he’s claimed…
So, unlike Birtherism, which is a constant spaghetti-salad of unsupportable conjecture and lies, there are for now, a number of very plausible speculative concerns to these hidden returns.
What is most curious is why this seems to be almost the ONLY issue and position that Romney shows any “backbone” on at all… he’s flipped and pandered on everything else…yet when it comes to showing his own tax returns…now, that’s suddenly “taboo”.
I could be somewhat sympathetic to his position, if he hadn’t ALREADY released 23 years of his tax returns to the McCain campaign in 2008, when he was being vetted by them for consideration as McCain’s VP running mate. Further, although he’s having his running own running mate, Paul Ryan, only release 2 years (to not exceed what Romney himself is releasing), all the insider reporting that came out indicates that Romney’s camp demanded a whole heck of a lot more than just two years from Ryan for their own vetting purposes…
…So the biggest concern to me here is why would he be so adamant to NOT release records that he already HAD to provide, just 4 years ago, when being vetted by that VP slot. Was there something in what McCain’s vetters saw, that caused Romney to fail the vetting? (Similar to what is suspected about Marco Rubio in this year’s cycle).
After all, if a “VP vetting process” demands seeing all of these tax returns, then how the heck does a Presidential candidate make an argument, that he can provide decades of records for that type of vetting just four years earlier and demand many years of records in vetting his own VP candidates internally, yet NOT be willing to provide those same documents to the public?
That’s what I don’t get…
I’m with you. I’m a diehard Obama supporter, but I still think this hulabaloo over Romney’s tax returns is silly. On the one hand, I wish President Obama and the presidential campaign as a whole were above such muckraking. On the other hand, politics is what it is, and you can only lose when you try to take the moral high ground.
I actually think that it’s a major point. It gives us regular citizens who make less than $100,000 a year ( a vast majority) an opportunity to see how the tax laws that have been passed are affecting what we pay and what the more well-off pay. What kind of loopholes they take advantage of that are not available to most Americans. It is a very important discussion that we can see in black and white and not under the guise of politics.
Maybe, but what does it have to do with Romney’s qualifications to lead the country? He’s not the only rich businessman in America. You could make the same point with someone else. Hammering on Romney specifically only seems to serve as a political tactic to make Romney look bad.
But everyone President in modern times has had multiple years of their taxes subject to scrutiny.
It is one of the few empirical ways we have of trying to suss out some semblance of how someone runs and manages their own personal life, before we decide whether they have the right ethics and decision making skills to run an entire country…
While true in the strict sense, it is only since Obama/Biden that taxes from multiple years before they became President/Vice President were released.
http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/web/presidentialtaxreturns
Awesome site. Good to know!!! Always glad to get actual facts instead of just rely on the “conventional wisdom”, which so often turns out to be wrong…
I think the myth/assumption of multiple prior years stems from Romney’s dad, who supposedly did release 12 years or something like that, when he ran for President…
George Romney released 10 years of returns and he was the front runner at the time. Quiting the race before the first primary had nothing to do with his tax returns or possible Mexican/American dual citizenship.
Here is a good story about Mitt’s dad and why he dropped out framed in the light of the Congressman Todd Akin story.
http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/1604/let_s_be_real_george_romney_once_misspoke_todd_akin_didn_t
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2012/08/ap-special-operators-tell-anti-obama-groups-zip-it-082112/
Good for him in speaking up and saying that! He’s absolutely right.
I found the opening paragraphs of the article to really drive the bigger issue of unbecoming military conduct home:
I’m glad you shared that article link, thanks!
This article has been updated to include a birther comment from Mustaine.
Which just goes to show what a moron he’s become. Falling for a fake prank sign image like that…and taking it to be the gospel truth…
Just furthers my belief that satire can almost be irresponsible in this current political atmosphere, as many RWNJ not only won’t grasp the satire, but will cling to the fake stuff as being real and get all riled up and activist over it…