“2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA”

Cross posted from Hot Politics Dot Com....

AUTHOR DINISH D’SOUZA DOESN’T LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY

Posted September 17th, 2012 by Julie Driscoll & filed under Uncategorized.

No wonder the conservatives love “2016: Obama’s America” (which brought in more bucks than any  conservative documentary, ever), by Dinesh D’Souza, right-wing darling and skilled quoter of right-wing talking points, and the author of the best-seller, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”  As Mary Sheehy Moe of greatfallstribune.com notes, D’Souza asks viewers to “dig for the roots of Obama’s rage.”  D’Souza, explains Moe, “posits that Obama carefully cultivated an unthreatening black mask, the better to dupe us with. It worked. Glib and endearing, he got himself elected president. Then he implemented his sinister plan.”

What sinister plan, you might ask?  Why, the sinister plan to end the war in Iraq, provide healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans, keep the auto industry from being obliterated, adding stimulus to the economy to keep it from crashing, and, well, little stuff like making sure kids eat, helping students attend college, and making sure our young undocumented immigrants aren’t yanked out of classrooms and deported.

As D’Souza told Bill Maher, he uses “Obama’s own voice,” and lets “Obama tell his story.”  If the splicing and dicing going on in Fox News’ production room – and the Romney campaign – is any indication, “Obama’s own voice” no doubt bears little recognition to things the President actually said.

Bill Maher challenged D’Souza, saying, “You say he’s filled with rage . . . the real Obama, I’ve never seen do anything like that.”

D’Souza had a ready answer, that Obama’s rage is ” . . . vigilante rage, it’s a different kind of rage, sublimated . . . let’s look at an example, healthcare.  Obama had a plan, and the Republicans had a summit with Obama and they offered a lot of ideas.  Obama could have taken one or two Republican ideas and he would have had a bipartisan plan.”

When Maher reminded D’Souza that when it comes to healthcare reform, “The whole thing is a Republican idea . . . a Democrat idea would be at least a public option . . . This is a business-friendly plan .  . . It’s a big blow job to the insurance companies is what it is,” D’Souza was ready with another talking point:  ”Obama could have gotten some votes but he didn’t care because to him Republicans are the bad guys, so that’s what I mean, he campaigned as a healer . . . but he hasn’t governed that way.”

Maher admonished D’Souza again, reminding him that the second President Obama got into office, Republicans said they were going to block everything he proposed.

D’Souza – despite pretending to completely understand the man – admitted, “I haven’t talked to Obama,” but continues to insist that President Obama has based his life on the life of his father, a man he barely knew:  ”The same guy who hardly met his father wrote a 500-page book called ‘Dreams from my Father’ . . . ”

“How far up your ass,” Maher mocked, “Do you have to go to pull that out?”

Some of D’Souza’s talking points include the assertion that President Obama ” . . . sees America as the rogue nation in the world . . . I believe Obama is anti-capitalist . . . he has fundamentally altered the relationship of the citizen to the state . . . .”  Other assertions include the “Obama deficit” (much of which was left over from the Bush regime), and a refusal by D’Souza to acknowledge that Bush caused a good portion of the deficit the President has been battling since he came into office.  ”Four years later,” D’Souza says indignantly, “You’re still blaming Bush . . . . .”

And then there was D’Souza’s interview with Cenk Uygur, where he continued the assault on the President using well-worn and faded talking points: “Domestic spending has been growing promiscuously under Obama . . . ”

When reminded by Uyger that Bush left a boatload of debt, D’Souza pompously replied, “A president should take responsibility for the budgets that go under there . . . Obama has had a chance to leave his imprint both on foreign policy and on domestic policy . . . I’m suggesting that Obama wants to reduce America’s footprint on the world because he thinks we are stepping on the world . . . I think that Obama is using debt to saddle future generations with obligations to foreign countries, so he is a global redistributor . . . .”

D’Souza repeated the top lie on the right-wing wish list, that “the largest Bush deficit was $500 billion, the lowest Obama deficit is $1 trillion . . . 2008 America’s deficit was under $500 billion . . . We’re talking about a carry-over year and you’re basically trying to saddle Bush with an Obama deficit . . . Average the Bush deficits over 8 years and they don’t total the amount that Obama has had in 4 years in deficits . . . .”

Watch Uygur debate D’Souza, Parts I and II.

D’Souza says what staunch conservatives want to hear, and as most right-wing pundits and “experts” do, rarely shake hands with the truth.  D’Souza has never met the President, doesn’t know him, and is using as “factual data” other right-wing talking points.  It’s like the old journalism trick of reporters chatting casually and coming up with theories, then quoting each other as “unnamed sources.”

As Moe commented in her opinion piece, “Maybe it’s time to inquire into the roots of D’Souza’s rage.”