Professor Althouse, at the time made the case that the New York Times sought to portray John Roberts as a gay man. The Times will editorialize about gay rights but if necessary even the very gay staff at the Times will gay-bait.
Is there any doubt that Barack Obama would gay-bait to save himself? Anyone with doubts about narcissist Obama trashing those who stand in his way were also likely surprised by the latest Tom Cruise divorce. In the past Barack Obama has gay-bashed in order to save his political skin. In order to save himself now Barack Obama would trash the Chief Justice on being gay whether or not it is true.
We certainly hope that no one is so naive as to think that if the Obama health scam had been struck down by the Supreme Court that Obama’s henchmen would restrict themselves to arcane and barely understood Constitutional arguments about the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause or the Tax Power. Obama’s political history is one we have discussed many times before and it is ugly. The go to sources for Barack Obama’s campaigns are always the trash dumpster of sex, scandal, innuendo, and planted stories.
The trash dumpster, including adoption records, was about to be dumped on Chief Justice Roberts head. Whatever had to be done would be done.
Obama was in a lose/lose situation. The priority for Obama, as usual, was himself. Obama did not want to suffer a personal loss even if he took whatever is left of the Dimocratic Party with him on his “victory”.
Obama did understand that a “victory” in the high court would provide more propulsive power to the opposition. But Obama also knew that despite all the brave talk from his campaign a ruling of “unconstitutional” would have finished off his presidency and ruined him personally as a loser.
This does not mean that Obama would have gone quietly into the darkness if the Supreme Court red-stamped “unconstitutional” on the health scam. The Barack Obama henchmen would have gone nuclear against the Supreme Court.
Why would Obama go nuclear even if he lost everything in a ruling throwing out ObamaCare? Perhaps firebombing Roberts and the court might might might salvage his miniscule reelection chances. Perhaps by nuking the court and Roberts vengeance would be served. The left would join Obama in the destruction of Roberts and the court at least in fear of what Roberts has planned for the next term of the court.
As head of the Judicial Branch of the tripartite government John Roberts had his own calculations to make.
John Roberts could simply have led the court in a 5-4 majority striking down the Obamination root, trunk, and branches. The Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause would both be eviscerated and the tax power ruled not germane. After such a wonderful ruling Roberts would then have to hunker down and prepare for attacks on himself personally and the Supreme Court institutionally.
A 5-4 ruling against ObamaCare could be followed by more 5-4 rulings to complete the Roberts agenda (described in Part I). But that would come at a great price politically. And what would happen if Obama won reelection by a sustained attack on the court in a fear and smear campaign?
As a general rule, people like Barack go after others in a way that reflects their own life.
So I'm not surprised that there's the possibility that Roberts might be gay and this might have been the threat to get him to go along.
After all the rumors about Barack's down-low living pre-date his business relationship or 'business' relationship with Reggie Love.
There's talk of bath houses and his love of having White men go down on him and so much more.
People keep looking for a woman for Barack to screw around with, an Obama girl, when the most likely match up for Barack was always going to be a guy, a Kail Penn type working in a make-work White House job.
So with all of that, it wouldn't surprise me if those rumors regarding Roberts were true.
I wonder, when Barack's out of the White House, what sort of things will find out? I assume a great deal but that most of the good stuff will wait until 20 or 40 years. Barring Michelle divorcing him. Even then, she'll probably use silence to ensure she gets a great settlement.
I wonder who will be the first President & First Lady to divorce?
It's going to happen.
We live longer, we've had younger-ish presidents starting with Bill Clinton.
At some point a First Lady is going to say, "Screw this, I want my life!"
And she'll grab it. And good for her.
But I wonder who it will be?
I actually doubt it will be Laura Bush. I also believe Bill & Hillary are for life.
I could understand Michelle leaving Barack.
I do feel sympathetic to her. In a way I did towards Laura Bush.
I don't feel that she gets to do anything that matters to her and I didn't feel like Laura did either.
In both cases, you had a woman so clearly better than her husband.
Smarter, more on the ball, could probably run the country better without breaking a sweat.
But they're trapped into playing a role to make their husbands look better.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
| 
Friday,
 July 6, 2012.  Chaos and violence continue,  Moqtada al-Sadr delivers a
 major speech on Iraqi television, Osama al-Nujaifi calls out the 
slander State of Law's tossed at him, and more. 
Starting with peace.  In the US, the Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project is planning a dinner to honor Iraqi-American Sami Rasouli who has done much work for and in Iraq.  As the director of Muslim Peacemaker Teams, he has worked in Iraq with Iraqi refugees.  The dinner in his honor is planned for July 17th at the Crescent Moon banquest hall in Minneapolis.  And you can click here for a January 2010 interview with Sami Rasouli that Matthew Rothschild did for Progressive   Radio. 
 | 
Reuters notes
 a Ramadi car bombing claimed 7 lives and left twenty people injured and
 quotes an unnamed police officer stating, "Bodies were scattered 
everywhere and some houses were destroyed."   Alsumaria reports 1 person was shot dead outside his Baquba home by an unknown assailant using a machine gun and police shot dead a supect on a highway leading into Baghdad from the south.  Anwar Msarbat (AK News) reports a Hit car bombing which claimed 3 lives and left six people injured. All Iraqi News reports on the Hit bombing but insists it was a roadside bombing.  In addition, AK News reports
 that Shahla Omar Aziz set herself on fire Thursday night, buring 70% of
 her body, after learning her husband had sold their home to pay of a 
debt.
The political crisis continues in Iraq.  As a result, Moqtada al-Sadr gave a major address today at 8:00 pm Baghdad time and it was carried by satellite TV. 
 al-Sadr is a Shi'ite cleric whose followers include 40 MPs in 
Parliament. He has has had a long and difficult relationship with 
both the Bush White House and the Barack White House.   
All Iraqi News reports
 he declared that three presidencies should be limited to two terms.and 
that this is needed to ensure that Iraq does not experience another 
dictatorship.   The three presidencies are the President, the Prime 
Minister and the Speaker of Parliament.  Such a limit would mean Jalal 
Talabani, current Iraqi President, would be done as would Nouri 
al-Maliki.  Only Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi would be elegible for another 
term.  When the Arab Spring swept through the MidEast in early 2011, 
Nouri al-Maliki swore that he wouldn't seek a third term.  A day later, 
his spokesperson modified that statement to insist he wouldn't seek a 
third term if he had not achieved in his second term.  Then, almost a   
year later, his attorney declared there is nothing preventing Nouri from
 seeking a third term.  Moqtada stressed that the Iraqi people need 
security and that means there needs to be a Minister of Defense, 
Minister of National Security and Minister of Interior (the article 
actually says Intelligence but it is Interior and this second article makes that point clear).   
 Nouri was supposed to nominate people to be heads of the security 
ministries and have them confirmed by the end of December 2010.  
Instead, Nouri has failed to do so and with violence continuing to rise,
 that's a serious failure.  Moqtada also discussed how Iraqis need 
electricity they can count on and water they can drink and jobs, they 
need jobs.     Those are three demands Iraqis made when they protested 
in the streets in February 2011.  For those who have forgotten, this is 
not just when Nouri announced he wouldn't seek a third term but also 
when he announced that, if Iraqis would give him 100 days, then he would
 address these issues.  Moqtada asked his followers to give Nouri the 
100 days.  After 100 days, Nouri failed to deliver and pretended as 
though he'd never made the promises.
In 
addition, Moqtada spoke about Iraq needing to get along with neighboring
 countries.  Nouri has alienated Turkey -- in fact, Nouri's constant 
verbal attacks and constant lies about Turkey have resulted in the 
Turkish government becoming much closer to the Kurdish Regional 
Government and more and more distant from the Baghdad-based government. 
 He's alienated the Arab neighbors and this was on display during the 
Arab League Summit.  Dropping back to the March 30th snapshot:
There are 22 countries in the Arab League.  Hamza Hendawi and Lara Jakes (AP) put
 the number of Arab League leaders who attended at 10 and they pointed 
out that Qatar, Saudi Arabi, Morocco and Jordan were among those who 
sent lower-level officials to the summit. Patrick Martin (Globe & Mail) explains
 that Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani (Prime Minister of Qatar)
 declared on television that Qatar's "low level of representation" was 
meant to send "a 'message' to Iraq' majority Shiites to stop what he 
called the marginalization of its minority Sunnis."   Yussef Hamza (The National) offers,
 "Iraq has looked to the summit, the first it has hosted in a 
generation, to signal its emergence from years of turmoil, American 
occupation and isolation. It wanted the summit to herald its return to 
the Arab fold. But the large number of absentees told a different 
story."  That's reality.
 And let's deal with reality such as when people talk about things that they don't know s**t about.  Social Media Queen Jane Arraf Tweeted with her male followers about the speech:
 That
 second one?  If you click "expand" you'll find a man (of course, 
Twitter's nothing but online dating apparently who ridicules Moqtada's 
idea about a corruption.
He has to ridicule it
 because, see, he wrote an 'analysis' that was published today and it 
turned to s**t the minute Moqtada started speaking.  Again, these 
so-called 'experts' really aren't experts.  They don't what they're 
talking about, I have no idea how our world got so screwed up that these
 people get to speak.
But did Moqtada say what Jane says he did?
No.
Jane, you should embarrassed and ashamed of yourself. 
The fact that you have X number of characters in Twitter is no excuse.
What
 Moqtada stated about corruption was that it needed to be addressed with
 a full government assault -- including executive orders, including 
judicial committees, including Parliament and new bodies that are not 
about partisanship, ethnicity or ideology. 
I'm
 sorry that someone offered masturbation in text form and it was 
published today and that their hypothesis about Moqtada -- not "theory,"
 theories can be tested with certain expected results -- turned out to 
be trash.  And if you'd own that, I wouldn't even be mentioning it. I 
saw that piece of garbage this morning and chose to ignore it. But if 
you're going to make little jokes implying that Moqtada doesn't know 
what he's talking about, you're begging for someone to say you're full 
of s**t.
And Jane Arraf did an awful job in 
'reporting.'  This was a major speech.  We'll be returning to it on 
Monday.  Two Tweets?  That's embarrassing.  That the second one leaves 
the wrong impression, distorts what he said, that's bad journalism.
In other political news, Karwan Yusuf (AK News) reports
 that rumors of Saleh al-Mutlaq replacing Ayad Allawi as the leader of 
Iraqya have been called "baseless" in a statement Iraqiya sent out which
 notes that the false rumors are meant to weaken Iraqiya.  The rumors 
never should have had traction.  Allawi is Shi'ite.  al-Mutlaq is 
Sunni.  Iraqiya is a mixed slate but with the crisis in Iraq having a 
Shi'ite as a leader gave them a credibility with other blocs that 
al-Mutlaq wouldn't have.  In addition, al-Mutlaq was not allowed to run 
in 2010 because Nouri's Justice and Accountability Commission was 
calling him a Ba'athist.  (His name was only cleared at the end of 
2010.) Saleh al-Mutlaq as a leader could easily be dimissed as he 
unfairly was in 2010.  As we've noted many times before, Nouri's State 
of Law excells at   rumors.  Little else.
They use rumors to attack and distract.  From yesterday's snapshot:
We
 haven't covered this but, as usual, State of Law tries to distract.  So
 they've got a 'movement' to question Speaker of Parliament Osama 
al-Nujaifi who they have spread rumors about (specifically he allegedly 
has millions -- over 20 million dollars -- and they want to know where 
it came from).  That they want to distract with.  And they may succeed. 
 Nouri has a lot of enablers in the press and certainly in the United 
States.  But you really don't expect to see the always 
screaming-their-heads-off-about-what-Nouri-just-did-to-them Communist 
Party rush to prop up Nouri.  This is truly a very sad moment but it 
does explain why the Communist Party is and has been meaningless in 
Iraqi politics.  'They opposed Saddam Hussein!'  Yes, they did.  With 
the same sort of weak-spined opposition they've offered Nouri.  They 
apparently exist solely to mislead the Iraqi people into believing there
 is a   token of opposition in the country.
First off, it's twenty billion, not twenty million, I was wrong.  This evening All Iraqi News reported
 that Osama al-Nujaifi's office has issued a statement calling out the 
slander and distortions about him and that he may resort to the court to
 stop malicious slander.  All Iraqi News notes he did not 
identify what the slander was.  He may be referring to the twenty 
billion rumor.  He may be referring to something else.  State of Law has
 a made a point to spread one rumor after another about their political 
rivals.
The last weeks have seen some achievements for Iraq on the world stage.  Zakaria Muhammed (Kurdish Globe) reports
 Ahmed Maeed, whose professional name is Ahmed Rambo, now holds the post
 of president of the World Amateur Body Building Association branch of 
Iraq.  Muhammed explains:
Majeed, 37, 
began lifting weights in 1988.  He didn't tell his parents who had taken
 a dim view of the sport, regarding it as alien to Kurdish culture and 
tradition.  Within two years, Majeed had won gold in the Iraqi 
Bodybuilding Championships in the 75 kilo category.
By
 this time, he had earned his nickname for resembling Sylvester Stallone
 and wearing bandanas on his head like the American actor's Rambo 
character.
Majeed left Iraqi Kurdistan in 
1995 to escape the bitter Kurdish civil war, but continued to compete 
successfully in Germany.  He returned in 2004, and led a group of 
Kurdish bodybuilders to the 2009 Asian Bodybuilding Championships in 
Thailand. 
That's one.  The second is Shene Ako.  Rudaw notes, "Last week, Shene Ako, 19, was crowned Miss Kurdistan 2012 at Erbil's Rotana Hotel.  Chosen from 12 contestants."  Rudaw has the first interview with Shene Ako.
Rudaw: What do you want to tell Ranya and its women?   
Shene:
 To all women in Kurdistan, not only those in Ranya, I want to say that 
we are very pretty and smart women. Don't hide that. Step forward. Care 
about your beauty but also care about your inner self. If you are 
beautiful inside, then you will look beautiful on the outside as well. 
Everybody is beautiful.   
Rudaw:
 Do you feel that Kurdish women cannot advance because of tradition? 
What do you tell parents who do not allow their girls to step forward?   
Shene:
 I want to say I am very proud of my parents because they allow me to do
 many things. I want to open the road for Kurdish girls because I know 
that, if the road is opened for them, they will feel proud about their 
parents and advance.   
Rudaw: Have you had any plastic surgery?   
Shene:
 No. There was a plastic surgeon at the contest (judge panel). But I 
have not had any plastic surgery, and I believe if I'd had even a small 
amount of surgery, I wouldn't have won.   
Al Bawaba observes,
 "Beauty pageants have been absent from Iraq for decades.  During the 
time of the monarchy, which was overthrown in 1958, they were held in 
social clubs, especially in the southern port city of Basra."
Going back to the United States, Saturday, Austin, Texas will see a parade.  Tara Merrigan (Austin American-Statesman) reports,
 "The parade, which will start at 9 a.m. at the Congress Avenue Bridge 
and end at the Capitol, will include the 36th Division Infantry Band 
from Camp Mabry, a Reserve Officers' Training Corps color guard from 
Westwood High School, motorcycle clubs, muscle car clubs and a roller 
derby club. The event will feature veterans from the Iraq War and 
previous wars."  This will be followed by a veterans jobs fair.  The 
following day it's Portsmouth, New Hampshire's turn.  Laurenne Ramsdell (Foster's Daily Democrat) notes,
 "The   Welcome Home Parade will proceed from Junkins Avenue onto 
Pleasant Street, then onto State Street, Wright Avenue, Daniels Street 
and then through Market Square. The parade will continue onto Congress 
Street and Fleet Street before it loops back toward Junkins Avenue."  
This Sunday parade will also be followed by a jobs fair, held in "the 
lower parking lot at City Hall."  These are among the many parades that 
have been taking place across the country.  If you know of one in your 
area, feel free to note in an e-mail and it will be included here.  A 
parade in Alabama did not go so well recently and it's thought that one 
of the reasons was lack of awareness that it was taking place. 
 
