S.E. Cupp: As stupid as she is attractive

It may be safely assumed that if S.E. Cupp looked like CNN’s Candy Crowley, no one would know who she is. But just like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, because Cupp is attractive, her stupidity matters far less to those who find favor with her.

I do not make the “stupid” charge cavalierly. Anyone who is familiar with Cupp’s downright nonsensical position that although she doesn’t believe a god exists, she nonetheless wants the president of the world’s most powerful country to believe otherwise. Put another way, she wishes for a president who answers to what she basically says is a figment of his imagination. Kind of like a schizophrenic.

Her latest column for the New York Daily News is an attack on Ron Paul in what amounts to a fourth-grade foray into international affairs—a complete mindfuck of gibberish, non sequiturs, and just plain ignorance of US foreign policy:

The problem is that Ron Paul’s America would be a scary place to live in. So would the rest of the world.

That’s not because he would, as he has so often promised, end the Federal Reserve or the Department of Education, but because he would end our history of fighting brutal regimes and human rights abuses around the world.

And what about our history of favoring and supporting brutal regimes and human rights abuses around the world? Cupp does not address this aspect or even acknowledge its existence.

She then proceeds with a familiar line of attack, made popular by Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and other neocon nincompoops who refuse to understand what the 9/11 attacks were about:

It goes beyond getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. On 9/11, his position is that we started it. “Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been explicit,” he said in Monday’s debate in Tampa, “and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing . . .” His argument was cut off by a chorus of boos.

He concluded that “we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years,” which is untrue, then asked, “Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, then there's some problem.”

Ron Paul’s explanation for the 9/11 attacks is shared the CIA, the 9/11 Commission, and anyone who’s ever studied US foreign policy for more than 15 minutes, using sources other than Sean Hannity. The 9/11 attacks were of course examples of “blowback”—the unintended negative consequences of US foreign policy. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries—overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1954, installing the Shah in its place, supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, imposing a devastating sanctions regime on Iraq in the 1990s that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people, bombing a critically important pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998, supporting dictatorial regimes as in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and elsewhere, among other crimes—it’s going to cause widespread resentment among the civilian populations in those places.

But instead of comprehending this fundamental axiom of not just international relations, but basic human interaction, Cupp takes an all too familiar swipe at Paul:

The idea that Bin Laden was justified in his violence is dangerous and patently anti-American.

Ah yes, the old, “Giving an explanation for 9/11 that goes beyond the they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms mantra means you are justifying their crimes and hate America” shtick. If this is true, then surely the American CIA hates America, because it’s concluded the same thing. Maybe in her next column, Cupp will write about how Langley needs to be purged of all its anti-Americans.

Continuing on,

This is what the founders advised,” Paul says. “We were not meant to be the policemen of the world.” One is left wondering, then, what President Paul would have done about Hitler or Pol Pot. What would he have done about Rwanda or Bosnia? What would he do now about North Korea?

Cupp isn’t helping her own case here by citing these examples, which show what a putz she is. With the exception of one these, the answer to her question is, the same thing all those other presidents did in those situations.

What would Ron Paul have done about Hitler? Probably the same thing Franklin Roosevelt did after Germany’s Japanese allies bombed Pearl Harbor: asked for a declaration of war on the Axis powers.

About Pol Pot, he would’ve done nothing, just like Carter did. In fact, Carter provided military support to the Khmer Rouge after Vietnam invaded in 1979. And that was our “human rights president.” For his part, when he took office Reagan continued to recognize the overthrown Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government.

Rwanda? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the US did nothing, again, with the Clinton administration taking its sweet time before it could bring itself to calling the slaughter of 20% of the Rwandan population a genocide.

Bosnia? Does she really mean Bosnia, as in the small peacekeeping mission the US had there for about a decade? Or does she mean to say Kosovo, for which we bombed Serbian civilians and after which the ethnic cleansing actually increased? Who knows? Who cares?

And regarding North Korea, Obama and his predecessor have largely ignored them, save for the imposition of trade sanctions. Truth be told, if Ron Paul were president, I doubt we’d see a big shift in US policy vis-à-vis North Korea.

What’s the matter, S.E.? Didn’t want to mention Darfur where the US did nothing also? I’m sure she would’ve mentioned the ghastly civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that killed over 5 million people, but she’d first have to know that that country exists. The US didn’t intervene there either.

The US of course didn’t really intervene in any of these places for the plain fact that there was nothing to be gained geopolitically from doing so. Or at least, the costs were perceived to outweigh the potential benefits. On the other hand, Iraq, which the US invaded, sits on an ocean of oil. Saudi Arabia, despite its tyranny, is a US ally because it too has a shitload of petroleum. Ditto for the monarchy in Bahrain, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Cupp makes it sounds like a Ron Paul presidency would allow dictators free reign. But at least then we wouldn’t be supporting them.

- Max

I don't care if Obama loses in 2012

America's most powerful conservative

Against my better judgment, I’ve been commenting on stories on Huffington Post lately. Usually my comments are about how Barack Obama has failed both as a president and a liberal. There is little that distinguishes him from George W. Bush, save for some progressive rhetoric that is ultimately unaccompanied by action. Any honest and politically literate progressive knows this. The only supposed liberals who seem to really believe in Obama can be found on MSNBC or on the Washington Post editorial page—centrists posing as liberals, because they have allowed themselves to be dragged rightward by the craven corporate whores in the modern Democratic Party.

Even the liberal commenters on Huffington Post and Daily Kos have given up defending Obama with any degree of fervency. Most of them, anyway. A few die-hards remain, but their minds are impervious to reality, a la that infamous 30% of the population that was still approving of George W. Bush’s performance at the tail end of his second term.

Despite this widespread disappointment, I am frequently criticized for my Election Day 2012 plans, which do not include a trip to the polls, except perhaps to cast a Green for president and maybe a vote for my congressman. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I will not vote for him again. That much is certain. Even if I lived in a swing state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, I still would not vote for Obama. And it is here, for many liberals, where my need for “ideological purity” comes under fire. Whether it’s on the threads of HuffPost or when I’m having drinks with liberal friends, the specter of a Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann/Mitt Romney is always raised, as if failing to vote for Obama next year—despite my disappointment with him on almost every major issue—will haunt me until my dying breath.

Liberals insist that liberals must vote for Barack Obama because if we don’t, who knows what whackadoodle could be our next president, as if that outcome would be anyone’s fault but Barack Obama’s.

I for one am not going to allow myself to be scared into the voting booth at the mere mention of Rick Perry, Mitt Romney or anyone else. No doubt, however, that millions of other liberals certainly will. And that’s a problem. It sends a message to the Establishment-oriented Obama, and all other Democrats present and future, that to secure the “base” of the party, one need only frighten those in it with the prospect of a theocratic supply-side dystopia if Republican candidate X wins the election.

And maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s what we need in this country. Apparently, Bush didn’t make things bad enough in order for endless war, permanent tax cuts, and the trampling of the Bill of Rights to be deemed bad ideas by either party. After all, these buffooneries have continued apace into this so-called liberal administration, which has doled out trillions to the financial sector while destroying the savings of the general population, which eagerly awaits a jobs plan that they will no doubt be terribly disappointed by.

If Obama manages to win reelection, it would be a disaster for liberalism rather than a boost. Since Obama is not an actual liberal, his reelection would demonstrate that, electorally, core New Deal Democratic values don’t really matter on a substantive level, only at a very superficial rhetorical one. It would vindicate former press secretary Robert Gibbs’ dismissive assertion that only the “professional left” is disaffected with the president, meaning anyone who gives a shit about protecting America’s working class from corporate marauders, several of which populate the administration itself.

If Obama is defeated in 2012, the pundit class will proffer every explanation possible for the outcome, except for the correct one—that Obama is a centrist whose shamelessly pro-corporate policies failed to effect positive change in the lives of ordinary Americans during the worst financial crisis in 80 years.

- Max