But you’d have to be stupid, fanatical, and dishonest to argue–as Trig Truther Sullivan does–that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious “long game” that is destined to succeed.

If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for re-election is the weak Republican field.

Sullivan, who claims to care about national debt, begins by arguing, contrary to reality, that Obama’s massive $787 billion stimulus (actually, $862 billion) turned the economy around. He offers no proof other than the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy familiar from basic economics. Sullivan also ignores the composition of the stimulus, which shoveled cash to cronies and bloated big states with their massive public sector obligations.

In addition, Sullivan claims that Obama’s auto bailout succeeded–when in fact it pushed aside property rights and subsidized failed “green” cars, rather than allowing car makers to rebuild through normal bankruptcy. He also commends Obama for continuing George W. Bush’s bank bailouts–but does not mention the Dodd-Frank financial “reforms” that enshrine “too big to fail,” hurt small businesses and fail to address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Next, Sullivan tries to defend Obama on taxes, pointing out that the president passed tax cuts as part of the stimulus. He ignores the numerous new taxes and tax increases that Obama signed into law–from higher cigarette taxes to the many ObamaCare taxes–as well as the glaring fact that Obama has been campaigning for the past several years on the promise to raise taxes on the rich, and would have done so if not for Congress.

Sullivan’s defense of ObamaCare is that it is more “moderate” than it might have been. That is hardly a measure of success–and after devious accounting tricks, thousands of waivers, and the abandonment of ObamaCare’s Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, the law is clearly on a path to failure. Fundamentally, it is unconstitutional–a reality Sullivan does not care to note in his encomium to Obama.

On foreign policy, Sullivan hails Obama’s success in the death of Osama bin Laden–giving a fantastical account of the president’s courage, and perpetuating the false meme that Bush had “ignored” Al Qaeda. In fact, it was the war in Iraq–and the interrogation methods that Sullivan decries–that produced the intelligence that led to bin Laden.

Aside from the war on Al Qaeda, Obama squandered every diplomatic and military success bequeathed to him by Bush. He destroyed missile defense in Europe, and wasted hard-won gains in Iraq by withdrawing troops against the advice of the military. While appeasing Iran and gutting the future of our defense, Obama alienated and undermined U.S allies. Sullivan, who detests Israel, even applauds Obama’s pointless confrontation with Benjamin Netanyahu–hardly a way to sell a second Obama term.

Having dealt with conservatives (in his own mind at least), Sullivan lists reasons that the left should be pleased with the president they elected. He’s correct that liberals should back Obama; they will never again see a U.S. president with such radical policies and pedigree. But he overlooks the degree to which Obama has discredited left-wing theory by exposing its flaws in practice–the real reason the left is distancing itself from him.

What is most telling in Sullivan’s admonition to liberals is his use of Obama’s inaugural metaphor of the “clenched fist.” The president, he says, “begins by extending a hand to his opponents” and outwits them when they respond “by raising a fist.” Yet Obama was referring to foreign policy, not U.S. politics. Once in office, of course, Obama embraced America’s enemies and bullied domestic opponents–as even the left knows all too well.

Sullivan quotes George Orwell: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” What is in front of Sullivan’s nose is Obama’s incompetence. He has coasted on the military success of his Republican predecessor, and is taking credit for moderate economic progress enabled by a Republican Congress that has held taxes, regulation, and spending in check. If he wins in 2012, Obama will again have Republicans to thank.

President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.

“We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. “Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”

Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called CLASS Act advocates to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program’s demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday in a blog post on the liberal Huffington Post web site that the administration did not see a way to make the program sustainable. Sebelius indicated her agency hadn’t been able to figure out a way to ensure the program providing long-term care paid for itself as required by law.

Later in a call with reporters on Friday, an HHS official said work on the program was being suspended.

“We won’t be working further to implement the CLASS Act … We don’t see a path forward to be able to do that,” Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee told reporters on Friday.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, said Monday that repealing the program would not add to the deficit, making Republican repeal efforts that much easier.

The Obama administration sold the healthcare law with the argument that it would lower the nation’s long-term health costs, and the CLASS Act was an important reason why.

Read more here.

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, known as CLASS, a pet program of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D- Massachusetts), was to have been sponsored by the federal government but maintained as a voluntary plan to which healthy, younger, working Americans would contribute in the event they became disabled later on in life. Participants would have paid a monthly premium that ranged widely between $235-$3000, depending on income, during their employment years, and then collected a daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled.

The tragic flaw in the plan is that unless large numbers of healthy people are willing to sign up for the program during their working years, the cost of the program would become prohibitive due to the needs of the disabled who would benefit from the plan. Unlike the purchase of long term care insurance in the private sector, CLASS did not offer lower premiums to healthier participants. Thus, the program attracted those who were already disabled in some way, yet able to work to some extent, and who anticipated the need for long term care in the future. Without healthy subscribers paying into the system, these individuals would not likely be able to afford the steep premiums.

Not surprisingly, if the program had survived, it would have ultimately been “too big to fail” and required a tax bailout. Congressional Republicans intend to repeal CLASS, which, according to the Heritage Foundation was “poorly designed, and actuaries criticized it as being unsustainable well before the passage of Obamacare.”

Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, who had argued for some time that the flaw in the program could be fixed, announced on Friday that the plan could not, in fact, be saved–a situation that was met by significant protest on the part of liberal seniors’ lobby, AARP, and union leaders. Supporters of CLASS wrote a letter to President Obama, urging him to use his “authority,” provided to him under his signature legislation, to “make necessary changes to the design of CLASS to make it work. We fully expect the administration to go forward and use that authority in implementing the law.”

It is almost incredible that the Obama administration entertained the notion that CLASS would actually work. In fact, it is questionable whether the White House ever expected it to survive or if it just threw the program into Obamacare as a bone to its base, never intending to make it viable. In essence, CLASS was really an entitlement within an entitlement, another entire Social Security program built into a government health insurance plan.

Of course, when AARP and the unions wrote the president, asking him to use his “authority” to make CLASS work, we can be assured that what they were urging is for the program to become mandatory rather than voluntary.

All of Obamacare must be repealed, but the fact that its authors now admit CLASS is unsustainable is a major victory for taxpayers and freedom lovers alike.

In the “gee, I made this not very smart person look really stupid” genre of film making- the sort of “ask stupid questions and play ridiculous characters and edit to make funny” made most famous by Sacha Baron Cohen- comes “Baltimore Acorn Workers support prostitution.”

Acorn is a community organizing network that works on a variety of issues, from voter registration to fighting predatory lending practices. In other words, it is just the sort of organization for poor people that the Right loves to hate.

According to the news stories, the video may show two (Black and seemingly not terribly educated) Acorn employees trying to help two (white and seemingly educated) young people figure out how to start a brothel with girls from El Salvador (who, not coincidentally, are here illegally).

ACORN workers caught on tape allegedly advising on prostitution – CNN.com.

Within this fantasy is every fear and desire of the far right: evil Black women activists, poor people, illegal immigrants, and sex.

Of course, it’s also every left wing fear and desire as well: two upper class white kids pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute in a way that can only be described as “are you fucking kidding me?”. He is wearing white pants and a blue oxford (very preppy) and a fur cape! What white college kid “pimp and ho” party did that cape come from? Also, as you watch the video, it is clear that these women are trying to help, but also seriously disturbed by the behavior of these two white kids. On the other hand, the class hierarchy is beyond them, the power dynamics well known to all the participants, and the women continue to try to please the white kids.

And who is this brilliant Borat of the Right? A young man by the name of James O’Keefe. According to his website, he

directed, scripted, produced and acted in a series of undercover videos showcasing racism and statutory rape at Planned Parenthood in 2007 and 2008.

Before that he served as Publications Coordinator at the Leadership Institute, where he helped initiate 22 independent newspapers and magazines on college campuses nationwide. He also gave lectures on campus strategy and fundraising, preaching the gospel of Saul Alinsky.

His most recent project is Veritasvisuals.com, a collection of satirical short films on newsworthy topics, featuring ridiculous situations and demands. These have included straight men with girlfriends getting married to each other in Massachusetts and petitions to adopt Gitmo detainees into American homes…

James got his start producing videos… at his alma mater, Rutgers University, where he founded The Centurion in 2004.

Okay, I don’t really get the Saul Alinsky reference, but the rest of it makes sense. A privileged, ultraconservative, straight white man who hates: same sex marriage, Planned Parenthood, civil liberties, and ACORN. Gee, who would have guessed that’s the genius behind this incredibly “shocking” piece of film.

The worst part is, of course, that this ultraconservative fantasy will be played over and over on Fox News, throwing grease on the fire that is white resentment. More “evidence’ that Acorn and other groups that work for social justice for poor people are in fact part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to deflower the purity of “our” women.

Perhaps we need a Borat of the Left who will make right wing nuts like James O’Keefe look ridiculous? Oh, never mind, they don’t need our help.

~~

Laurie Essig teaches sociology at Middlebury College and writes for a variety of publications, from Salon to the Chronicle of Higher Ed.  She currently blogs at true/slant, where this piece was originally published.  Her book, “American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Spirit of Our Time,” will be published by Beacon in 2010.

The relentless attacks on ACORN’s members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented.  An international entertainment conglomerate, disguising itself as a “news” agency (Fox), has expended millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, in their attempt to destroy the largest community organization of Black, Latino, poor and working class people in the country.  It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform is gaining traction.  It is clear they’ve had these tapes for months.

We are their Willy Horton for 2009.  We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers.  If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America.  This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.  I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated.  But it is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist “filmmaker” O’Keefe and his partner in crime.  And, in fact, a crime it was – our lawyers believe a felony – and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators.

We will not be intimidated by this international conglomerate, which has made as its mission the destruction of our organization.  ACORN members are committed to the empowerment of their communities – Black, Latino, poor, and working class – at the deepest level.  We are an organization committed to halting the foreclosure crisis and keeping people in their homes.  We are an organization committed to ensuring quality, affordable health care for every American.  We are an organization that will not be stopped in our commitment to our members and our communities which has included:

View the complete statement at ACORN.org.