The amount of vitriol being spewed at Michelle Obama from the right-wing paparazzi is really getting gross now. The beltway media remains mum about these vicious smears by the wingnutopia and its appalling. Evey step she makes there's always a John Birch conspiracy theory attached to it by these jackasses. TMZ better move over because did you know the First Lady is really Lady Gaga?

Right-wing media have attacked Michelle Obama for going shopping at Target, claiming she went " 'incognito,' Lady Gaga-style" and asking, "Who does she think she's fooling?" Right-wing media have previously attacked the first lady for everything from promoting health initiatives to wearing a red dress at a state dinner.

It's just getting creepier as the election approaches.

Limbaugh: "It Has Gotten So Bad, They Had To Send Moochelle Out There In A Lady Gaga-Type Getup. She Went Shopping At Target." During the September 30 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh said: "It has gotten so bad, they had to send Moochelle out there in a Lady Gaga-type getup. She went shopping at Target." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/30/11, via Media Matters]

Malkin: Obama Went To Target "About As 'Incognito' As Lady Gaga." In a September 29 blog post, Michelle Malkin attacked Obama for shopping at Target, writing that Obama was "about as 'incognito' as Lady Gaga's outfit at her younger sister's graduation." Malkin went on to call the first lady "the glamour queen" and further stated that Obama's Target visit was "[t]o counter the negative diva buzz" and that it "[l]ooks like she left the bling at home." [MichelleMalkin.com, 9/29/11, via Media Matters]

The Blaze: "What Luck!" Obama "Wasn't Snapped Without Make-Up, With Messy Hair Wearing Sweatpants To Do Her 'Everywoman' Shopping." A September 30 post on The Blaze stated:

Our First Lady has sooome luck. Not only is her hubby the leader of the free world, but just as the Obama camps [sic] is desperately looking for a way to relate to America's Average Joes, a staff photographer with the Associated Press just so happened to be there to document her recent Target shopping jaunt.

[...]

What luck! Obama also wasn't snapped without make-up, with messy hair wearing sweatpants to do her "everywoman" shopping... like some of us who will remain nameless.

Exit question: I could see a quick stop in at the local Target store as something that might happen out on the campaign trail. But who really believes Michelle Obama left the White House to pop in at the Alexandria, Va., Target because the East Wing ran out of paper towels? [The Blaze, 9/30/11, emphasis in original]

Weasel Zippers: "Honestly, Who Does She Think She's Fooling?" A September 29 Weasel Zippers post titled, "Pic of the Day," stated, "See, Mooch is just like us!" and showed a photograph of the first lady at Target. The post went on to ask, "Honestly, who does she think she's fooling?" [Weasel Zippers, 9/29/11]

I guess they're cranky. It's the idea of having Mitt Romney running as the 2012 GOP nominee because Chris Christie has continually rebuffed all their slobbering man-crush pleas. Poor right-wingers, they need a nap. Because really, Michelle Obama is in their crosshairs? She has been nothing but a model First Lady. It's a creative game they have of just making stuff up. I'll try it: If she disappeared from sight for a few weeks Beck would say that she must be hiding in a cave in Kenya practicing some ancient voodoo mojo to undo Christianity in America so we'll be more susceptible to becoming Marxistsocialistheavens.

Try your own hand teabircher thinking. It's shockingly easy.

Herman Cain thinks Barack Obama was raised in Kenya. Because Kenya, Indonesia, they're all the same, right?

Bloomberg News:

“Barack Obama is more of an international,” Cain said. “I think he’s out of the mainstream and always has been. Look, he was raised in Kenya, his mother was white from Kansas and her family had an influence on him, it’s true, but his dad was Kenyan, and when he was going to school he got a lot of fellowships, scholarships, he stayed in the academic environment for a long time. He spent most of his career as an intellectual.”

Indonesia, Kenya, Whatever.

I left unasked the question of whether it’s more disreputable to be Kenyan or to be an intellectual (and let us pity those suffering Kenyan intellectuals). But I suggested to Cain that while Obama had, in fact, spent four years of his youth abroad, it was in Indonesia, not Kenya. To which Cain, who has dallied with the fading phenomenon known as “birtherism,” responded, “Yeah, Indonesia.”

Yeah, that Kenyan dad who saw him twice after he left was such an influence. And even if he was, so what? Is there something awful about Kenya? And if there is, then why do those dominionist types keep pouring money into that area?

Cain may have made an unwitting error, or an intentional one. Who really knows? But if the best they can do is to sort of suggest that he's "different" because of his childhood, they're really reaching at straws. Of course, having such things come from Cain are a teaBircher's dream, because he's black, but he's their black guy, and he was fer shure born in the good ole US of A.

And just to prove it, that Cain ad at the top is all about being a "real American".

[h/t Huffington Post]

We always knew that Mike Huckabee is prone to occasional lapses in which he reveals his real, deeply ignorant self. But this one takes the cake:

MALZBERG: Don't you think it's fair also to ask him, I know your stance on this. How come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth cer - why Mr. Obama did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate. It's one thing to say, I've -- you've seen it, goodbye. But why go to court and send lawyers to defend against having to show it? Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?

HUCKABEE: I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits --

MALZBERG: Of Winston Churchill.

HUCKABEE: The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Huckabee, of course, is just repeating his Fox News colleague Stuart Varney's slimy attack on President Obama of a few weeks ago -- a simple and outrageous lie. And yes, Varney was just repeating Glenn Beck.

As Eric Hananoki at Media Matters observes:

Contrary to Huckabee's claims, Obama did not grow up in Kenya. Obama spends significant portions of his book Dreams From My Father describing his first visit to Kenya in the late 1980s. On page 304, Obama writes of his arrival at Kenyatta International Airport (emphasis added):

Kenyatta International Airport was almost empty. Officials sipped at their morning tea as they checked over passports; in the baggage area, a creaky conveyor belt slowly disgorged luggage. Auma was nowhere in sight, so I took a seat on my carry-on bag and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes, a security guard with a wooden club started to walk toward me. I looked around for an ashtray, thinking I must be in a no-smoking area, but instead of scolding me, the guard smiled and asked if I had another cigarette to spare.

"This is your first trip to Kenya, yes?" he asked as I gave him a light.

"That's right."

"I see." He squatted down beside me. "You are from America. You know my brother's son, perhaps. Samson Otieno. He is studying engineering in Texas."

I told him that I'd never been to Texas and so hadn't had the opportunity to meet his nephew. This seemed to disappoint him, and he took several puffs from his cigarette in quick succession.

The BBC noted in a 2008 article that "Barack Obama has never lived in Kenya and he has visited the country just three times."

Additionally, Obama did not grow up "with a Kenyan father and grandfather." Indeed, Dreams From My Father is largely about Obama's struggles with the absence of his father. The AP noted in 2006 that Obama "was mostly raised in Hawaii and did not know his Kenyan father well."

Maybe Huckabee is thinking of Indonesia, where in fact Obama lived between the ages of 6 and 10. I think the Dutch were bigger subject there than the British, though. And it's a looooooooong way from Kenya.

Either Huckabee is a secret Birther, or he's as ignorant of his geography as the Shrilla From Wasilla.

Megyn Kelly invited the resident expert in all things British at Fox, Stuart Varney, on to discuss that sensational story from the Telegraph claiming that the Obama administration was selling British nuclear secrets to the Russians.

Of course, Varney believes every word of the story, even though it has in fact been pretty readily debunked. And lots more, too:

VARNEY: There's an increasing feeling in Britain that the American administration doesn't like the British, for whatever reason.

KELLY: What's the evidence of that?

VARNEY: Well, there's two symbolic items, and two more serious items. To first, the symbolism: The first act of President Obama when he walks in the White House -- send back a bust of Winston Churchill, the great statesman between America and Britain. Second --

KELLY: Why did he do that?

VARNEY: Because his father -- President Obama's father -- disliked the colonial administration in his native Kenya.

Varney then described the other supposed anti-British offenses: the White House's clumsy gift gaffe of presenting the Queen with an iPod; the administration's ardent prosecution of British Petroleum over the catastrophic Gulf oil spill; and now, the supposed nuclear-secrets release.

Kelly ran through these and actually demonstrated that they're all either nonsense -- such as the supposed "secrets" release, which has been debunked by the State Department (it seems we've been providing Russia with this information since 1991, and everyone has known about it) -- or otherwise perfectly explicable. But she was at a loss on the Churchill-bust charge, which Varney again asserted has convinced Britons that President Obama "dislikes" them:

KELLY: But the thing about the bust -- has the White House ever come out publicly to explain why they sent that bust back?

VARNEY: It was apparently because President Obama's father, who was a native Kenyan --

KELLY: Have they admitted that?

VARNEY: I believe that is out there. I've not read the formal statement. But an explanation was requested. And the explanation was that Obama's father, being a native Kenyan, disliked the British colonial rule in Kenya, which ended in 1963.

Now, the folks at Media Matters are more polite than I am. They called this a "fact-free Obama smear and a "betrayal of reality." Actually, this is just a flat-out baldfaced lie.

Because in reality, back when the explanation was requested, a very clear one was given by both the White House and the British embassy: The bust had been a loan to the White House that expired with President Bush's tenure and was simply due to be returned.

A British Embassy spokesman said: "The bust of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Jacob Epstein was uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W Bush, from the Government Art Collection in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship.

"It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009."

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I have to say this Birther movement is starting to get on my last nerve. Seriously, what more has to be done to get through their thick, dense skulls that Obama was born in the U.S.? And now, to add "credibility", they trot out G. (apparently for Geezer) Gordon Liddy--a convicted criminal, mind you--to express all the same ridiculous doubts ("That's not a birth certificate--it's a certificate of live birth!") and to assert that the "preponderance" of evidence (which is limited to his grandmother saying he was born in Kenya and the screaming mimis of some very unhinged people) suggests that he is, in fact, an illegal alien, and all the other evidence (the certificate of live birth, the birth announcement in the Honolulu papers, etc., the verification by state officials, the fact that courts have already thrown this ridiculous charge out, the fact that he was certified as a legitimate candidate for POTUS, etc.) entirely dismissable.

Chris Matthews ever-so-gently (perhaps in deference to the feeble appearance of Liddy?) smacks down the insane hate and logic spiraling out of control.

Media Matters looks at the nutwing conspiracists who should be relegated to the outer fringes of the national dialogue being instead mainstreamed by the likes of Lou Dobbs.

McClatchy via Yahoo:

An exit poll carried out on behalf of a U.S. government-backed foundation indicated that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki suffered a resounding defeat in last month's disputed election, according to officials with knowledge of the document.

The poll by the Washington -based International Republican Institute — not yet publicly released— further undermines Kibaki's claims of a narrow re-election victory. The outcome has sparked protests and ethnically driven clashes nationwide, killing hundreds.

It wasn't clear why the International Republican Institute — which has conducted opinion polls and observed elections in Kenya since 1992— isn't releasing its data. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kenya confirmed that a poll was conducted but referred questions to the institute, where officials couldn't be reached for comment.

Kenyan activists called on U.S. officials to release any data that would shed light on election fraud. Read on...

Upon further review, it turns out that GOP presidential candidate John McCain is on the board of directors for this non-partisan Republican group. He wants to be our president and engaged in the voting process, I think he should come forward and explain why his group hasn't made the polling data available to the public. Other names of interest on the board of directors are L. Paul Bremer and Lawrence Eagleburger. These people are just fine with fair and honest elections -- just as long as they're outside the United States.

Crooked Timber: To hell with bipartisanship. We need robust competition

Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: Hugo Chavez interviewed by...Naomi Campbell?

IntoxiNation: Email destruction, a Republican tradition

Words of Power: Those in the developed world who think what is happening in Kenya is something distant and peculiar to the African Continent are living in a dream.

The Newshoggers: Our government wouldn't lie about an attack, would they?

The Intersection: Why wont the Democrats bring back the Office of Technology Assistance?

From Gambia Series V at the photoblog "The G8", winner of this year's Best Photography - Post Processing Award from The Photoblog Awards.

G8:

"Four eyes - one destiny.
Of the children that die under age of five:
* In Kenya 35% die of aids
* In Namibia 48% die of aids
* In South Africa 50% die of aids
* In Zimbabwe 50% die of aids
* In Botswana 64% die of aids

It is time to get angry, time to do something. We can no longer sit back and say "that is awful, somebody should do something". It is our world. It's our responsibility."

Open Thread below....

I've been trying to get some sort of handle on exactly what went on in Somalia. Something about it did not pass the smell test for me. A military expert with whom I consulted expressed some of the same reservations about the story that I had (albeit with far more specific knowledge).

First, the AC-130 is not a precision weapon in any practical term. It is fairly accurate area weapon and can contain it's fire to areas slightly larger than a football pitch (100mx90m). They may have hit "a senior terrorist figure" (who can tell from that altitude) but they hit a lot of other people in the process. Unless there were special forces on the ground calling in the fire it would be haphazard. Talk about back to the future, when every dead Vietnamese was Viet Cong -- the only requirement for identification was an unmoving corpse.

Then, as a follow up, he sent this article from the Guardian UK:

The US air strike on Somalia failed to kill any of the three top al-Qaida members accused of terror attacks in east Africa.

A senior US official said today that Sunday night's attack had killed between eight and 10 "al-Qaida affiliates" near the southern tip of Somalia.

But he said that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Abu Taha al-Sudan and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, all linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 Mombasa hotel attack, were still on the run. "Fazul is not dead," said the official, contradicting earlier reports. "The three high-value targets are still of interest to us."

I'm not sure what to think about this. Why Somalia now? Is this another case of "Wag the Dog" the Republicans accused Clinton of during the "Monica-gate" scrutiny?