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The only thing the Obama Administration did [with regard to Osama Bin Laden] was get out of the way. - John Bolton

When I heard Bolton say this I wanted to punch the television set, but after reading Chris Mooney's new book, The Republican Brain, I decided instead to chalk up this bit of intellectually dishonest tripe between Liz Cheney (in for Sean Hannity) and John Bolton to the Fox News mission of feeding the misinformation chain True Republican Believers depend upon to cling to their incorrect beliefs.

Still, it's galling to have them try to not only rewrite the Obama Administration's approach to foreign policy but to claim that torture, or "enhanced interrogation" in Cheneyspeak, was the reason Osama bin Laden was caught and killed.

David Corn's latest book, Showdown, has a detailed look at what factors went into Bin Laden's capture and killing. Here's a summary Corn wrote recently to rebut Karl Rove's lies about it.

On the night of April 28, 2011, Obama held a top-secret meeting with his closest national security aides to discuss how to proceed. The CIA had earlier informed Obama that its analysts had concluded there was a 60 to 80 percent certainty that Bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound. But the agency had conducted a red team exercise, in which a set of analysts who had not previously worked on this case evaluated the intelligence. This group ended up with lower odds: 40 to 60 percent.

Several of Obama's national security advisers were worried by the red team results. Michael Leiter, the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, believed the CIA had inflated the case. And when the president went around the horn and asked for recommendations, both Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Bob Gates counseled waiting for more definitive intelligence. Other advisers in the room opted for a missile strike (which would be less risky but could yield a less definitive outcome and cause collateral damage). Leon Panetta, then the CIA chief, and John Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, backed the proposed helicopter raid. Such an operation, though, was not supported by a majority of Obama's advisers. Everyone in the room knew that much could wrong with such an operation. (Gates had lived through Black Hawk Down and the failed Desert One rescue attempt during the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration.) And they also realized—though it was not explicitly discussed—that if the Bin Laden mission went bad, it would probably sink Obama's presidency. Nevertheless, the next day, Obama greenlighted the raid.

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This is not a post about rising gas prices, despite the title of the video. No, this post is about something else entirely. Rising gas prices just happens to be the convenient topic.

I've just finished reading "The Fox Effect" by David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt. For those of us who have lived every painful minute of the past three years, reading this book is no less painful, nor will it offer many revelations. What it does offer, however, is a strong, well-argued case for the anti-American techniques they use to indoctrinate and hypnotize their audience into believing the lies they spew. Beginning with the history of Fox News and Roger Ailes' vision for "conservative television," the book takes the reader through how Fox News is structured, what their goals are, and how they've changed since Barack Obama was elected President.

For those people smart enough to keep Fox News out of their living room, it is an instructive and safe walk through their process. For those of us who have actually watched it over the past three years, it feels like having a root canal six times over.

Still, the book really should be shared with as many people as possible, if for no other reason than to save them from the consequence of too much Fox viewing; namely, being a misinformed citizen, which harms our democracy. On page 168, the authors describe "The Fox Effect," as it relates to fake controversies like Shirley Sherrod and ACORN. But it's far more than that. They also use the same techniques and distorted facts to create fear and discontent for fun and profit. The gas price rise is a shining example.

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This is the stuff of nightmares right here:

Newt Gingrich received a standing ovation from the audience at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting on Wednesday for promising to appoint John Bolton to be secretary of state if elected president.

The former House Speaker pledged to appoint Bolton, the controversial former ambassador to the United Nations for President George W. Bush, to the top diplomatic post if he were elected.

Gingrich added that the appointment would be contingent upon Bolton's agreement to help reform the State Department and overhaul the foreign service to replace it with a more "entrepreneurial" organization.

Blegh. The very thought makes me nauseated. I honestly thought that there was a part of Newt's brain that was panicking at being at the top of the polls, because it's fairly clear that he entered the race initially to pump up his book/media sales. If you looked at his campaign calendar up until this month, almost all of it consisted of book signings. He hadn't put in the infrastructure of campaign offices and he had a tough time keeping what little campaign infrastructure he had staffed. But now the ego side of Newt has taken over and he's already planning out his cabinet nominations, something that his target has already cautioned against.

But let's get past the hubris and etiquette faux pas of planning out one's cabinet before a single primary election has occurred and contemplate just how bad Secretary of State Bolton would be for the country. As Mark David Goldberg of the UN Dispatch says, it's really, really bad:

When left to his own devices, Bolton did, in fact, try to impose his hard-edge ideology on debates at the United Nations. He just did not get away with it because he still had to take orders from a Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice) who was much more pragmatic than Bolton. In fact, when things got really bad Kofi Annan would telephone Rice and ask her to reign in Amb. Bolton. And she did. In December 2005, I reported out a good example of this dynamic:

For days, frantic negotiations on the substance of far-ranging UN reforms dragged on from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. But the one UN ambassador who generally arrived earliest and stayed latest always looked more upbeat than his bleary-eyed counterparts. “All night — all right!” quipped John Bolton to a press stakeout.

There was a reason for Bolton’s cheer: He was the man most responsible for the complexity of these negotiations. A month earlier, the newly minted, recess-appointed U.S. ambassador had sent negotiations into a tailspin when he submitted some 750 alterations to a 39-page text known as the “summit outcomes” document. Bolton’s most eye-popping suggestion at this summit, billed as a renewal of the UN’s 5-year-old pledge to help poor countries, was that all 14 references in the document to the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) be deleted.

The MDGs grew out of a global agreement on poverty eradication known as the Millennium Declaration, which was signed at a UN summit in September 2000. The “goals” that Bolton tried to nix include, among other things, reducing by half the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day — right now, 1.3 billion — by 2015. While the United States had never signed the agreement, the goals were never a target of Bush administration animus before Bolton came aboard.

Need another reason not to sit out the 2012 vote? This alone will drag the country back into the Dark Ages.

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John Bolton's little game of "If I were the President" is a dangerous one, especially since he's signaling that he might just have a gander at the 2012 GOP nomination for President. He took time out of his busy bloviating schedule to visit with Bill Hemmer and talk about how he would have handled things.

He thinks the US should have moved on Libya a month ago, unilaterally. If we had, according to Bolton, we'd be done and out of there.

Oh really? This is the same John Bolton who said this in 2003:

JOHN BOLTON: I think we already see evidence, substantial evidence of Iraq's WMD programs and I think we're going to see more.

I think the question of imminent threat is a matter when you have a regime like Saddam Hussein's that has a proven record of using chemical weapons against Iran, against its own people, that's plenty imminent enough for me.

That's why our policy in the United States on a bipartisan basis for several years had been we have to change the regime in Baghdad because the possession of weapons of mass destruction and weapons programs was integral to the regime itself and, as long as that regime stayed in power, the threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction was more imminent than I would be willing to risk.

March 20, 2011 was the eighth anniversary of the Iraq war. We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction, of course. Iraq was unilateral. If that's Bolton's idea of being "done and out of there", I think we know how the Libya course of action would have turned out.

Not content to only meddle in Iraq, Bolton also powered and ginned up the arguments that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, despite reports to the contrary. He saber-rattled at will with regard to Iran, and would have gladly sent US troops in there too if he could have without bringing Congress and the rest of the world down on his head.

Of course, none of this matters to Fox News. The only thing that matters to them is that John Bolton is a snarky guy with a resume who can warmonger while calling the President weak.

Oh, by the way, that's the Fox News theme o' the week. Hillary Clinton is strong because she wanted the US in Libya, the President is weak because he held back until a full international coalition had formed. All guests on all shows are required to make reference to, or otherwise tout this theme, whether directly or via snide remarks.

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Britain's new Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, joined in what is becoming an increasing right-wing chorus in Europe proclaiming the failure of multiculturalism, coming shortly on the heels of German chancellor Angela Merkel's similar proclamation in October.

This, of course, pleases the cultural warriors at Fox News, especially John Bolton, who was on Greta Van Susteren's show last night proclaiming how right Cameron is.

For the sake of argument, let us concede at least that multiculturalism has developed some important flaws over the years, some of which the conservatives have identified. What none of these critics have explained, however, is what system of racial ethics they would champion in lieu of multiculturalism.

If multiculturalism is dead, what do they propose we replace it with?

Remember: As I've explained many times, multiculturalism -- a concept first proposed by the father of modern anthropology, Franz Boas -- was specifically a direct reaction against white supremacism, and eventually overthrew it as the dominant American worldview. Most American critics are coy about what they would replace it with -- though of course, there are some Nativists who are not: they want to resurrect the white-supremacist ethos that was dominant in America for much of the first half of the 20th century and before.

Nonetheless, it was a concept tailored for America -- in part because of the national "melting pot" that has been our history, and in part because Boas saw it as a specifically democratic ethos. This may go a long way in explaining why the Europeans are continuing to struggle with it.

Consider, for instance, Cameron's chief rationale invoking what he calls "state multiculturalism":

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Straight from the Cold War, former ambassador John Bolton attacks Russia's decision to provide low-enriched uranium fuel to Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor. Unsurprisingly, he uses the situation to suggest that Israel (or the United States) should attack Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure prior to the insertion of the fuel rods into the reactor. The fact that Iran has agreed to turn over the spent fuel rods back to Russia after their use doesn't appear to be a part of the discussion. The Faux News anchor helpfully feeds Bolton the lines needed to sensationalize the story and slam the United Nations as a bonus. From Newsmax:

Bolton made it clear that it is widely assumed that any Israeli attack on the Bushehr reactor must take place before the reactor is loaded with fuel rods.

"If they're going to do it that's the window that they have," Bolton declared. "Otherwise as I said before, once the rods are in the reactor, if you attack the reactor you're going to open it up and radiation will escape at least into the atmosphere and possibly into the waters of the Persian Gulf.

"So most people think that neither Israel nor the United States, come to that, would attack the reactor after it's been fueled."
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The failure to demand it be shut down began in the Bush years, he said, and continues with the Obama administration "under what I believe is the mistaken theory that Iran is entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

"I don't think Iran is entitled to that, or I don't think we ought to allow it to happen, because they're manifestly violating any number of obligations under the non-proliferation treaty not to seek nuclear weapons. But this has been a hole in American policy for some number of years, and Iran and Russia are obviously exploiting it," Bolton said.

The attitude that Iran isn't entitled "the peaceful use of nuclear energy" is not one shared by the many non-aligned nations who are signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It's also interesting that pundits like John Bolton and his Faux News cheerleaders always forget that it was the United States government that first encouraged Iran to develop nuclear energy.

No, this is just another opportunity for The Mustached One to get on his high horse and repeat his mantra on how Israel would be justified in attacking Iran, how Iran's threat is at least equal to the 9/11 highjackers, that containment and deterrence won't work on Iran and that only a pre-emptive attack will stop other Middle East countries from seeking nuclear weapons. He's quite mad, but the right wing still loves him.

As a side note, one might suggest to the Obama administration that it might consider abandoning the Bush administration's policy of not negotiating with Iran until it promises to abandon its nuclear weapons program and allow IAEA inspectors back into the country. Isolation tactics don't seem to work when countries with economic problems need to make deals with anyone willing to pay cash. A more nuanced (and sane) discussion of Russia's deal with Iran can be found at the Washington Post.

Breaking? Not so much, but since I'm in the holiday spirit I thought I would give our readers the gift of laughter. As our UN Ambassador, John Bolton did almost as much damage to our reputation around the world as his boss, George Bush. Besides being wrong about just about everything, he was also a huge supporter of our former Vice President, Dick Cheney. So, it comes as no surprise that he penned this glowing, fact-free, delusional fluff piece -- proclaiming Dick Cheney -- Conservative of the year: (warning - link goes to Human Events)

In Washingtonian “inside the Beltway” terms, the most amazing aspect of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s new clout is that he is achieving it the old-fashioned way: talking about public policy. He is not running for President or any other office. He has not formed a PAC or a D.C. lobbying firm. He is not dishing on former colleagues, not spreading gossip, not settling scores. He is, instead, writing a memoir about his extensive career in public service, and giving occasional speeches and interviews, mostly on national and homeland security policy, long his central focus.

If you're feeling brave and looking for some extra laughs, click through to the original article and check out the comments. I'll start you off with #1 from commenter "Square Root":

The simple reason Dick Cheny causes angst to the ACLU atheist, heathen, pagan conglomerate is because he is so fearlessly honest. Conservatives such as he and Sarah Palin, threaten, by the power of their veracity to undermine those who must bribe fellow politicians in their last ditch effort to pass a government health care scheme that is rejected by 61% of Americans.

It is only a matter of time before these enemies of the people will fall on their own swords. Their bag of dirty tricks is nearly exhausted. They can not win on merit. Read on...

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Glenn Beck has intimated previously that President Obama wants to destroy you -- after all, who could forget the time he doused another Fox weenie with "gasoline" and then held a match in his vicinity, saying he was Obama?

He did it again last night, by way of explaining why he said he thought John McCain would have been worse than Obama. He put out a pot of boiling water, playing off the old scenario about boiled frogs, and how they can't tell they're in lethally hot water until it's too late if you turn the heat up slowly. That, he argues, is what has been happening to us, and McCain just would have continued the process.

Beck thinks what Obama is actually doing is turning the heat up all at once and then tossing the frogs (that is, the American people) in. So he grabbed a supposedly live frog and tossed it into the water. (Later, he had John Bolton declare that it was actually a fake rubber frog.) Gosh, he says, he was hoping the frog would jump out.

It really is amazing to think how far and how fast Beck has pushed the envelope of acceptable rhetoric for the American Right. I remember when Alan Keyes declared Obama "a radical communist," everyone laughed and shrugged and took it as another sign of just how far out to lunch Keyes really is. But Beck -- who really does increasingly resemble the lunatic who talks to himself on the streetcorner, except that he has a media megaphone and millions of dollars -- can say this stuff now and it scarcely raises a ripple.

Watch for the Obama Genocide Program theories to start turning up on this show any day now.

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Probably the most ironic -- no, make that flat-out bizarre -- aspect of Glenn Beck's ultimately successful campaign to force out Van Jones is that it was predicated on Jones' supposed indulgence in extremist rhetoric ideas.

This isn't just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. It's more like the black hole calling the sunspot dark.

Glenn Beck's history of indulging in extremism -- not just turning a blind eye to its presence, but promoting it outright to an audience of millions -- is so deep and wide that whatever indiscretions Jones might be guilty of fade into total insignificance.

Of course, we're all familiar with the remarks that lie at so much of the root of this matter: Beck's outrageous claims that President Obama is a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred of white people", which prompted a largely succesful campaign by Color of Change to encourage advertisers to pull their support for Beck's Fox News program. But that, frankly, is barely scratching the surface.

Keith Olbermann has put out a plea for information about Beck's own background in outrageous remarks. Of course, all he probably needs to do is go through the C&L archives on Beck

Still, what Olbermann -- and everyone else wondering how to fight back from this latest round of right-wing viciousness -- should focus on is the inordinate number of times that Beck has simply promoted extremist ideas and memes straight out of the most fringe elements of the American far right.

It goes back several years. Beck, in fact, openly promoted the John Birch Society and its "New World Order" conspiracy theories frequently when he was still at CNN Headline News. As I observed at the time:

Beck is busy building a narrative that not only opens the Pandora's Box of mass public consumption of far-right conspiracism, it also portrays the most hateful and paranoid and poisonous bloc of American politics as credible and normative.

Since joining Fox in January of this year, however, the tendency has not only intensified, it's simply gone off the rails.

Most notably, Beck has actively promoted ideas, theories, and concepts taken directly from the far-right "Patriot"/militia movement, many of which in turn derive from the ugliest sector of the right, white supremacy:

-- He "war-gamed" out an apocalytpic American future in which society has completely crumbled, leaving behind a "Road Warrior" society in which militias remained the only defenders of the remnants of white society.

-- He told his audience for several weeks running that he "could not disprove" the existence of concentration camps run by FEMA in which conservatives were to be rounded up. After a few weeks of this, he finally ran a segment that in fact did debunk these claims, explaining that in reality all of the supposed "evidence" for these camps was the product of a long-running hoax that began in the 1990s with the "Patriot"/militia movement. (He then later claimed that he had done nothing to promote these theories.)

-- He ran several segments, including one on his radio show, in which he promoted the concept of the secession of Texas from the Union. A little later, he tried to pretend he didn't agree with the concept while in fact giving a secessionist the opportunity to promote his plans to Beck's audience.

-- He regularly promoted "one world government" paranoia. This included a supposed plot to put us all on a global currency controlled by the New World Order.

-- He tried to argue that the chief cause of the sour economy was the United States' reliance on a central banking system.

-- He hosted an entire hourlong segment devoted to promoting militia-derived constitutional theories about state sovereignty.

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Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton -- who was probably the closest thing to a Bircherite militiaman ever to have held that position, which no doubt was why G.W. Bush appointed him -- was on the Glenn Beck program yesterday.

Considering how Beck's militia fetish has been reaching feverish levels lately, you can imagine how this went.

Yes, it was as bad as you can imagine:

Bolton: You can see in this upcoming G20 Meeting in the next few days -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom has his own ideas for a global New Deal -- and we're gonna see whether predictions about the Obama administration being post-nationalist, post-American, if you will, are you going to come into play here.

Beck: You know, let's not throw Barack Obama under the bus solely. I think George Bush was not as bad, but he was on the same road. I mean, you know, we've been playing the game with the United Nations -- thank God George Bush put you into the United Nations! I know you, you were extremely unpopular there -- I cheered for that!

I mean, I think these guys -- these guys, they'll take away guns, they'll take away our sovereignty, they'll take away our, our, our currency, our money! They're already starting to put all the global framework in with this bullcrap called global warming! This is an effort to globalize and tie together everybody on the planet, is it not?

Bolton: Sure. If you say all problems are global in dimension, then it's not much of a leap of logic to say you need global solutions, and what better place to have them than in the U.N. or a comparable institution?

They then explored at length the ways that the Obama economic-recovery plan plays into the one-world-government scheme, and concluded thus:

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