TGIFriday Reads

Good Morning!

Well, it’s getting to be the silly season.  Now we have Republicans who were for oil subsidies before they were against them or against them before they were for them.  Evidently, angry town hall participants can’t figure out why oil companies that keep making record profits while gouging at the pump deserve huge tax breaks. So, Republicans are making up their minds as they go along.  Here’s one such example from the Wonk Room:  Paul Ryan Endorses Ending Oil Subsidies, Even Though He Voted For Them

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) agree.d to end subsidies to oil companies during a town hall in Waterford, Wisconsin, this morning, eliciting great applause from an overflow crowd in a very conservative section of his district. “We also want to get rid of corporate welfare,” Ryan insisted. “So we propose to repeal all that”

…

But Ryan voted twice this year to actually extend subsidies to oil companies, once on a motion to recommit on a shorter-term continuing resolution and again when he supported an amendment to the initial House CR. The Ryan budget, meanwhile, doesn’t specifically target oil subsidies, but only generally promises to end “corporate welfare.”

Earlier this week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) also indirectly endorsed ending subsidies to the oil industry, before walking back his support.

CBS Reporter Lara Logan is offering up more information on her ‘merciless’ assault  during the Egyptian uprising.  Logan was separated from her colleagues for about 25 minutes.

She declined to go into more detail about the assault but said: “What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”

After being rescued by a group of civilians and Egyptian soldiers, she was swiftly flown back to the United States. “She was quite traumatized, as you can imagine, for a period of time,” Mr. Fager said. Ms. Logan said she decided almost immediately that she would speak out about sexual violence both on behalf of other journalists and on behalf of “millions of voiceless women who are subjected to attacks like this and worse.”

It appears the Lake Havusu Arizona Newspaper filed to see Barack Obama Senior’s immigration file.  Their EXCLUSIVE–“Dad’s Immigration File Offers More Evidence Of Obama’s Birthplace” is an interesting read.  Sounds like Harvard couldn’t get rid of this particular Obama soon enough.  This really brings an interesting contrast to the President’s Book “Dreams of my Father”.

The documents also show that the CIS investigated the elder Obama as a polygamist, having a wife in Kenya and a “wife and child in Honolulu.” Dahlim’s memo adds that “Polygamy is not an excludable or deportation charge as Subject is a non-immigrant.”

Documents show that Obama, Sr. was denied an extension on his student visa in July, 1964, in part because Harvard University, where Obama, Sr., was a Ph.D. candidate, sought his removal. Obama Sr. eventually left the United States willingly after becoming an illegal alien for remaining in the country past the expiration of his visa.

An INS investigator, M.F. McKeon, wrote “They (Harvard officials) weren’t very impressed with him and asked us to hold up action on his application until they decided what action they could take in order to get rid of him. They were apparently having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.”

Documents show that Harvard officials considered Obama, Sr. to be a “slippery character,” and conspired with the INS to have him deported.

After raising nearly every racist dogwhistle in the play book,  Donald Trump Bristles at Claim He’s a Racist.  Gee, why would anyone think that when the guy questions how the President–a legacy who graduated summa sum laude from Harvard–got into Harvard in the first place.

Trump tells TMZ … “That is a terrible statement for a newscaster to make.  I am the last person that such a thing should be said about.”

Bob Schieffer delivered a scathing statement against Trump Wednesday night on the “CBS Evening News,” reacting to Trump’s insinuation that President Barack Obama may not have had the grades to get into Harvard.

Schieffer said, “That’s just code for saying he got into law school because he’s black.  This is an ugly strain of racism that’s running through this whole thing.”

We asked Trump if he was suggesting Obama got into Harvard Law School through affirmative action.  He said, “Affirmative action is out there.  It’s a program that is available. But I have no idea whether it applies in this case.  I’m not suggesting anything.”

Politically-motivated accusation and innuendo is nothing new–as pointed out by Politico–but does Trump’s birther agenda shift the practice to a new low because it rose to the level of a media feeding frenzy?

Lurid conspiracy theories have followed presidents for as long as the office has existed. Yet even Obama’s most recent predecessors benefited from a widespread consensus that some types of personal allegations had no place in public debate unless or until they received some imprimatur of legitimacy — from an official investigation, for instance, or from a detailed report by a major news organization.

“There are no more arbiters of truth,” said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.”

It’s hard to imagine Bill Clinton coming out to the White House briefing room to present evidence showing why people who thought he helped plot the murder of aide Vincent Foster— never mind official rulings of suicide — were wrong. George W. Bush, likewise, was never tempted to take to the Rose Garden to deny allegations from voices on the liberal fringe who believed that he knew about the Sept. 11 attacks ahead of time and chose to let them happen.

Well, at least it’s Friday!  So, what’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?