So Van Jones is a Truther. A guy who was once, by his own definition, a fervent communist, morphed into a sort of free market enthusiast (with the understanding of a three year old of what free markets are), signed a petition in 2004 asking the New York Attorney General to investigate the notion that George Bush knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance but allowed them to happen so that he would have a pretext for war.
Jones denies he knew what he was signing, that he didn’t read it very well.
I’d take him at his word - that he’s stupid not crazy - except according to Jim Hoft, even if he didn’t read the petition carefully, the guy is a died in the wool, out of this world, Truther nut anyway. He participated in a demonstration all the way back in 2002 which claimed government involvement in the 9/11 attacks:
Yesterday, news broke out that Barack Obama’s communist Green Czar was a 9-11 Truther. The administration much later in the day released a statement saying Van Jones was “not now or ever” involved in the 9-11 Truther movement.
Jones said the petition he signed in 2004 did not reflect his views and that he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name..Not true.
This article at Rense.com from 2002 links Van Jones to the 9-11 Truther movement at its infancy…
Perhaps it’s not surprising that presidents misfire on occasion in their hiring and end up with nutters in high places. I documented plenty of this kind of idiocy during the Bush Administration. The appointment of Paul Bonicelli to be Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - who taught at Patrick Henry College which made faculty members sign a “statement of faith” declaring the earth was created in 6 days among other goofy beliefs - is just one of a series of appointments of radical Christian conservatives, anti-science Luddites, and other kooks that populated the Bush administration.
It’s just that Jones is one of Obama’s beloved “Czars” with his fingers on $30 billion of our tax dollars. Those who lack basic critical thinking skills and substitute belief in rational thought for adherence to paranoid conspiracy theories do not belong in government.
What’s more, lying about it when you’re caught dead to rights should disqualify you from public service period.
It perplexes me that people like Jones, whose radical past is filled with racist, bigoted, statements against white people as well as nutty beliefs that corporations are trying to kill black people, are even seriously considered for important posts in government. It says something worrying about politics and government that constituencies like Bush’s Christian conservative base and Obama’s radical left supporters must be appeased by appointing high ranking managers or bureaucrats who sympathize with or believe the ideas of the most extreme fringes of both parties.
Jones isn’t the only nutter in the Obama administration. Zeke Emanuel’s relationship with Paul Ehrlich, he of the “Population Bomb” pseudo science, whose Malthusian theories may go down in history as the most spectacularly wrong predictions from someone that important people still take seriously, has never been adequately explained.
True, Emanuel’s relationship with the quack goes back 30 years, but I would love to get ‘ole Zeke in front of a Congressional Committee and ask him if he believed at the time that the world would run massive, cataclysmic food shortages in the 1980’s, or that China and India would have hundreds of millions starving to death, or that we would be rationing food in the United States. That’s pure nutter territory - even for back then. It calls into question Emanuel’s judgment as well as his ability to think critically. A lot of the scare quotes from Emanuel are from papers he wrote with Ehrlich that posited absolute worst case scenarios for rationing health care in an overpopulated world.
Might also want to ask Emanuel if he still believes in compulsory birth control and forced sterilization as Ehrlich does.
I don’t know if Emanuel’s views from 30 years ago should disqualify him from being health care Czar. I think it a legitimate question of Emanuel’s ethical grounding if he believed in stuff like shorting health care for the old in order to give it to teenagers. Unlike scientific views, how someone arrives at an ethical conclusion are formed in childhood and very rarely can change.
As for Jones, it may be that he doesn’t really believe in anything except what can advance his career. When it was cool to be a communist after the Rodney King verdict, he embraced it. When he saw a chance to get in the good graces of the far left after 9/11 by touting Truther theories, he leaped at it. And when the tide turned toward green, he jumped on that gravy train as well.
Is it too much to accuse Van Jones of being a cynical opportunist, playing on white guilt, catering to a radical constituency, while dressing himself in respectability by riding the green bandwagon all the way to the White House?
Or does he really believe all that crap?
Either way, Obama should dump him. And soon.
9:27 am
The problem for Obama is the domino effect. If he dumps Jones, all of Obama’s czars are going to get a thorough vetting from Obama’s critics. That many, if not most, of them will be found to have been swimming in some pretty nasty radical swamps is a given. Does he toss them all out? Does he say “Oops, I didn’t vet anyone”? He may dig in on Jones to try to avoid this, but, alas, it isn’t going away. Every one of his czars is going under the spotlight now. I think Obama will focus his efforts, along with his attorney general and his FCC “diversity czar,” on shutting down Fox News and talk radio. He doesn’t see Jones as the problem, only that the people found out about Jones.
9:47 am
Why in the hell would you even think Jones’ beliefs are a bug and not a feature? Until folks come to grips with the unpleasant fact that mouthbreathers like Hannity were right (and they were dead wrong) about this president’s radical associations, we can expect more strained analogies to the Bush Administration. Incidentally, even the biggest Christianist kook does not call for the destruction of the United States. Communists routinely seek this nation’s demise, and if you came across something that indicates Jones denounced his Marxism I missed it.
9:59 am
Apparently you have yet to experience the wonderful Reverend Fred Phelps.
10:05 am
Serious question, Chuck, because I don’t know. Does Phelps seek the destruction of the United States? I know he is a registered Democrat, but that is beside the point because he is a Christianist kook. I anticipated someone would bring up Robertson and Falwell because they claimed the 9/11 attacks were the result of their Imaginary Friend’s wrath, but even they never applauded such an act. Communists do. I think it was a natural segue for Jones to embrace Trutherism along with his Marxism.
10:20 am
“It perplexes me that people like Jones, whose radical past is filled with racist, bigoted, statements…”
I read this 3 times and my brain kept saying “bigtoed.” Time for a long weekend.
11:26 am
heh. That is only my interpretation of his insanity. An in depth study is impossible due to my gag reflex.
1:25 pm
This is a loser for you righty wingers. Bush DID know that “Bin Ladin was determined to attack the United States.” Why do we know that? Um, because he received a memo with that title and his terrorism analyst Richard Clarke briefed Bush that Bin Ladin planned to use hijacked planes to do it. Did Bush remember anything Clarke told him? Probably not. Did Bush care about anything that Clarke told him? Well, obviously not. Bush went on one of his three week brush clearing and biking vacations IMMEDIATELY after getting briefed. And did nothing for 2 months about the threat.
No, Bush did not allow it to happen. He was too intellectually deficient and just plain lazy to have an active role.
5:33 pm
“…Bush DID know…”
Are we still on this? Seriously? This garbage still passes as discourse? I know this is the internet, but can’t we all agree to put a little effort into debate? Holy Moses, this gets old.
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As for Van Jones, I think cynical opportunist just about nails it. I think he took his views to where the passions on the left were at any given moment. Frankly, a “Green Job” czar actually seems a little tame for him. “Going Green” is almost too mainstream to fit his style. I suspect he jumped at the prospect of power and the high-visibility nature of the position. That high-visibility will likely end up being his downfall as well.
6:18 pm
[...] Right Wing Nut House: “It perplexes me that people like Jones, whose radical past is filled with racist, bigoted, statements against white people as well as nutty beliefs that corporations are trying to kill black people, are even seriously considered for important posts in government.” [...]
3:08 am
I assume VJ is a truther that should be canned and ostracized, bur the Rense article is beside the point. The march to demand investigation was before the 9/11 commission and, IIRC, it was very much an open question whether Bush would permit a full investigation.
6:08 am
[...] to are going to come under scrutiny when appointed to high positions in government. (Although, as Rick Moran points out, some will slip through the cracks. In administrations of both parties.) Of course the [...]
5:51 pm
@Jackson:
What was Hannity right about? That disreputable in the Obama Administration demonstrate that Obama himself is disreputable?
Are you SURE that’s the standard of proof you want to apply to administrations? If that’s the yardstick, fine. How many Bush administration personnel were implicated/convicted in Abramoff (or just general bribery and criminal behavior), or or being incompetent idealogues (Goodling), etc., et. al.? Lets’s use your yardstick . . . what can we “conclude” about the administration?
Trying to condemn by association will not got well for your position, methinks.
6:12 pm
Rick is right that there are always a few kooks who land in government under every administration — but Van Jones is NOT a kook.
What we have found out about him in the past few days or so — and I’m sure this is only a small sampling from the guy’s activities and words over the past 20 years — is that he’s a man of thr far Left, not a crazy conspiracist. The “truther” petition was only a logical part of a radical world view where the US is the imperialist power which is, by definition, always to be opposed by “progressives” (as Marxist-Leninists) have used that term over the past 60 years. Similarly, while the corpses were still burning in the wreckage of the WTC, the Oakland demo in which Jones played a major role was devoted to denouncing “US violence” against Palestinians and people of color everywhere.
These views are commonplace among the assortment of self-styled radical groups on the American Left — communists of several flavors, Trotskyites, anarchists, etc — and a boiled down version of the same are fashionable among left-leaning students and professors.
What cannot be understood easily is how a man wedded to this world view got a policy-making job at the White House.
As a Democrat, that’s very unnerving. My party is NOT a party of radicalism and detestation of America. Even on the upper West Side of Manhattan, you’d have a hard time finding many people who’d agree with the “progressives” at that Oakland demo. It’s important not to let this slide just because Jones quit. The person or people responsible for letting this guy get close to power should be found out and at least chided by the Pre§ident.
11:59 pm
[...] RWNH: Van Jones = Nutter [...]
2:31 am
re: you wondering about forced infanticide
who is the nutter he has as czar of population control..or whatever he calls him?