I had to go to Goggle after listening to Rachel interview John Henke on tonight’s show. Henke is a “conservative†blogger who caught Rachel’s attention with a campaign against World Nut Daily and its wing nut approach to politics. In particular, he is trying to position himself as a “rational†voice on the right by seeking out meaningful, fact based debate and decrying paranoid conspiracy theories.
On the whole, I strongly support racheting up the fact-based debate on public policy. It has been a long time since anyone on the right has relied on facts, and we welcome the change. Now here is where things get a little…pardon the expression… hinkey. Just as he is willing to denouce the World Nut Daily, the left, Henke says (meaning us) should be denouncing truthers and Van Jones.
This is where I need to go to Google. I really didn’t know who he meant by “truthers.†At first I thought he was talking about people who wanted congressional inquiries to get at the truth of the many crimes of the Busch Administration. That would include me, but of course that is not what he was talking about, although I suspect this guy would be as opposed to the idea of getting to the bottom of the Busch lie machine as any member of the GOOP.
No. He was talking about people who believe that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States was a plot by Busch to take over the middle east. These people are liberals? I always thought they were wing nuts like the people who run World Nut Daily. We are responsible for them? OK, then. Here it is. I DENOUNCE THESE TRUTHER DUMB ASSES. They should shut up and sit down. George Busch did not plan the attack on the United States. He failed miserably in response to it. He wasted the good will of the world community, he wasted the confidence of the American people, but he didn’t start it. Bin Ladin did that, and while the Bin Ladin family has a lot of influence over George W. Busch, George W.Busch has no influence over Bin Ladin. George Busch is a lot of things, mostly he is an incompetent dumbass, but he did not underwrite the attack on 9/11.
And I have to react just the way Rachel did to the accusation that she had failed to appropriately support the effort to remove Van Jones from Government. Van Who? Ah. Here is the connection. Van Jones is a truther and Obama appointed him to a middle management job at the Council of Environmental Quality. I did not know that. I did not know anything about Van Jones, and for that I am sorry.
Now lets talk about the facts, since our friend Henke wants a fact- based discussion. Van Jones was a student activist at the University of Tennessee and is a Yale law graduate. He founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in California, which works for peaceful solutions to conflicts. He founded Color of Change, which is most noted for a campaign to get corporations not to sponsor Glennn Beck’s television program. Beck is a racist and a nut, and a worthy target if there was ever one. In 2007 Jones founded Green for All, an organization dedicated to creating a green economy for all citizens. He is author of a New York Times Best Seller, The New Green Dollar Economy, which is why the Obama Administration agreed that he should be qualified to be the green jobs czar at CEQ.
Oh yeah. And in 2004 he signed a petition that asked Congress to investigate the theory that Busch was behind the attack on 9/11. There is no evidence that Jones provided any other support for the petition or the truther movement. All he did was sign the petition. All the petition did was ask for an investigation.
Here is some more truth: whether I believed it or not, I would have signed that petition in 2004 had someone put it in front of me. Any right thinking liberal would have signed it. 2004. Busch stole another election. Terror alerts trumped political debate. Democrats in Congress grabbed their ankles, bent over and smiled. I would have signed it out of dispair. I would have signed it in the faint hope that it would get someone thinking. I might have signed it just for the hell of it.
So now I have to apologize to Van Jones. I was not alert to his plight. I did not take the time to learn of this scurrilous attack on his character by a right wing scum bucket like Glennn Beck… who led the fight to get Jones out of office in retaliation for the Color of Change thing. Van Jones is a loyal citizen and a distinguished public servant who was highly overqualified for the job he agreed to fill. He deserves better than he got.
Henke. I am happy to piss on the truthers, but Van Jones is my man.