White House Declines To Express Confidence In Van Jones

[This post has been corrected and updated. See notes below in brackets.]

Last night, Van Jones, an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, released a statement apologizing for some of his past remarks, and disavowing his signature on a 2004 petition raising questions about the Bush Administration’s involvement in allowing the September 11 attacks. “I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever,” Jones said in the statement.

[This morning, another document online surfaced, showing that two years before the petition, Van Jones had been on the organizing committee for a new biweekly newspaper opposing the Bush Administration's War on Terrorism. The document is listed online with the announcement of a protest march demanding a Congressional investigation into 9/11 and the Bush Administration's possible involvement. In my original posting on this topic, I conflated the two documents. "Van Jones had no involvement in the march," a person familiar with the matter tells me. The documents can be found separately online here and here.]

This morning White House press secretary Robert Gibbs took questions from reporters in his office, though he pointedly avoided addressing the 2002 web page, or stating that the president continued to have confidence in Jones service. A transcript of the exchange follows:

QUESTION: Van Jones. I know he has issued an apology for his proctological remarks, but apparently there is also video of him accusing white polluters of poisoning people of color communities. Does the president still have confidence in this guy?

GIBBS: He continues to work in the administration, and I would refer you to the statement that CEQ put out last night about this.

QUESTION: CEQ?

GIBBS: That’s the Council on Environmental Quality

QUESTION: Yeah, but Robert is that as far as you are going to go with this?

GIBBS: That is the statement that has been put out last night.

QUESTION: The stories on television have been pretty offensive.

GIBBS: And I think if you refer to the statement, he apologized.

Later in the press availability two reporters returned to the topic.

QUESTION: Van Jones. His name appears on a 2004 petition, demanding to know the truth about 9/11, whether or not the Bush Administration played a role in 9/11 so as to justify a war for oil. [NOTE: As stated above, the premise of this question is incorrect. Jones signed onto the biweekly tabloid, which did not espouse, in the announcement, any 9/11 revisionist theories.] He said in his statement yesterday that he doesn’t agree with that, and an administration source said he didn’t fully read it before he signed it, he agreed to have his name signed to it. Now it comes out today that in 2002 he was on an organizing committee for a 9/11 Truther march. Your administration has been very active in knocking down the so-called Birthers, the people who allege without any evidence, and despite all evidence to the contrary, that the president was not born in the United States. How can the administration tolerate somebody who subscribes to a different insane conspiracy theory, as a senior adviser?

GIBBS: Again, it is not something that the president agrees with, and again I would point you to the statement from CEQ.

QUESTION: How many past statements have to emerge before he no longer has the confidence of the president?

GIBBS: A good question for next time.

Up until recently, Van Jones, who is widely respected as an environmental activist, has been targeted by conservative pundits, who argue that his impolitic remarks, and the fact that he once identified as a “communist,” raises concerns about a secret agenda in the Obama White House, a suggestion that is unhinged, and not only because President Obama is in no way pursuing any policies that can be accurately characterized as “communist.” Jones, for his own part, no longer espouses “communism,” and his role, as an adviser to the CEQ, puts him at a far remove from major questions of economic policy.

But the fact that Jones appears to have espoused conspiracy theories about 9/11 seems to have changed the conversation, if only because the White House is now playing defense, declining to answer reporter questions. As it now stands, the White House does not have a ready answer for Jones’ past behavior, beyond the fact that he says he no longer agrees with those views. Heading into Labor Day weekend, White House spokesman Gibbs just does not want to talk about it.

Related Topics: van jones, Barack Obama, Uncategorized, White House
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  • square1

    So, now anybody who believed there was an insufficient investigation into 9/11 is going to get cut loose by the WH?

    I am predicting a lonely next 3 years.

    Oh, and he swore. I forgot that Rahm doesn’t tolerate that f—ing sh-t.

  • pafro

    This guy does what? Try to get more green homes built. You mean he isn’t anywhere near any other policy? You don’t say…
    Imagine if Republicans were ever forced to defend the people in their party that endorse wacky conspiracies?
    There are a helluva lot of prominent Republicans in positions where they actually wrote policy that have endorsed such crazy things as:
    -Believe our president was born in Kenya.
    -Believe our president is a secret Muslim.
    -Believe Hillary Clinton shot Vince Foster. One prominent Republican even shot pumpkins in his backyard in order to prove something or another.
    -Believe that in addition to Vince Foster, there is a long list of people the Clintons have murdered to keep their secrets-whatever the heck those are supposed to be.
    -Believe that the Clintons decorated a Christmas Tree with syringes and condoms.
    -Believe the Clintons were running drugs through the Governor’s mansion in Arkansas.
    I think that believing that the governor of Arkansas was running coke in a speedboat on the weekends is a lot more kooky than considering that their might be a lot of dirty ties between Saudi and Texas oil money, which is what the Carlyle Group/bin Laden stuff is about. We have pictures of these people glad handing each other over the course of the last 40 years. We have zero pictures of Bill Clinton decked out in a Miami Vice era vest cruising his speed boat to Columbia.

  • freeinpa

    Funny that whenever sunlight is cast on Obama and his grand schemes there is an uproar from the American public.

    Here is a guy whose sole qualification is a community organizer. Hmm sounds familiar. Now we have a Green Czar who can’t define a green job and the Obama adminstration has spent $60 billion on this without creating one green job.

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/209073

    Him being a nut job is just icing on the cake.

  • rustyreturns

    Believe! It is “Change we can believe in”!

  • rustyreturns

    So Michael, did you ask the White House when we would get an answer?

  • destor23

    I don’t get the controversy here. A lot of reasonable people wanted to know more about the relationships between the Bush family, the Carlyle Group, the bin Laden family and the House of Saud. This curiosity now disqualifies you from public service?

  • square1

    Here is a guy whose sole qualification is a community organizer.
    .
    What is it with wingnuts and distorting reality? Look, nobody is required to like Obama. One can disagree with him, his policies, or his values at their pleasure. However, one simply cannot relentlessly spout factually-vacant nonsense and expect to be taken seriously.
    .
    Barack Obama was a state legislator and a U.S. Senator prior to being elected President. Again, one doesn’t have to believe that his legislative experience was sufficient to prepare him for the job. There were plenty of Democrats in the primary who doubted his qualifications. But those jobs are his qualifications. He did not run on a record of being a “community organizer.”
    .
    What kind of MORANS have filled the GOP? Enough! You want to spout complete b.s.? Go eat paste and comment at Free Republic. Just go away.

  • pafro

    Remember the outrage when Bush hired John Poindexter, who had been convicted of five felony charges of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress, and obstructing congressional inquiries (as Wikipedia notes: “The convictions were reversed in 1991 on the technical grounds that the prosecution’s evidence may have been tainted by exposure to Poindexter’s testimony before the joint House-Senate committee investigating the matter, in which Poindexter’s testimony was compelled by a grant of ‘use immunity’.”) ?
    The guy ran a counter-terrorism shop at the Pentagon (we put a guy who lied to Congress in charge of a intelligence program and then we act amazed that some spooks might have lied to Congress…totally stupid).
    No you don’t remember the outrage. It was ignored by the traditional media.
    I would be willing to bet that Bush hiring a crook for an important position was never mentioned in accurate context within Time Magazine.
    Yet here we are hand-wringing over something some guy who promotes green jobs said.

  • http://twitter.com/michaelscherer Michael Scherer

    I have updated the post, since I misread the 2002 document. It contains two announcements, one for a new tabloid newspaper, and one for a 9/11 truther march. It appears from the document that Van Jones endorsement was for the anti-war tabloid, not the march.

    Apologies for my mistake.

  • http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com lawyermommy

    How totally exhausting that the White House always appears these days not to have responses to attacks which should have been reasonably anticipated.
    Do they imagine that Beck and others like him will stop their attacks, promotion of hysteria and spreading anti-Obama propaganda? I think not!

    I am a little unclear about the tactics this administration had decided to use to diffuse the inevitable baseless dissent from far right wingers, and “invective” spewed on them by other desperate extremists from a fractured Republican party for whom a failure of this administration would appear, at least at this time, to be their only hope for the “rebirth” of their party.

    It is the extremism that completely disgusted people like me and caused us to become Independents. I provide this information only because the Republican party tactics and the journalistic styles of their “base” is obvious and same. Why is the Obama administration acting as though the unfolding events are surprising?

    The events are not in the least unexpected or surprising to me, so why should seasoned politicians (the Obama folks) not have a prepared response to the “Van Jones” matter.
    An apology and then silence? Not really helpful at this time.
    But then, I am no politician and maybe the Obama camp has a plan and at this time, inaction is a part of it.

    I can only hope that there is a plan being executed despite what appears to be the shocked and lethargic appearance of the Obama team.
    I hope they do something to remedy this apparent state of affairs soon.

    http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

  • stuartzechman

    …and so the ideology of fluff rules our political discourse.
    .
    http://friendfeed.com/jayrosen/d4b1284f/in-ideology-of-fluff-outrageous-irony-plays
    .

    In the ideology of fluff “outrageous irony” plays a huge role in making the fluff look like news. But here fluff goes poof.
    .
    In the ideology of fluff, political thought follows the Holden Caulfield maxim: find the phony. You isolate the “outrageous irony,” as Michael Scherer put it.
    .
    Another way to boil it down: “Oh, the hypocrisy!” And if you’re a journalist working in this style, the frothing irony is more important than the underling issue.
    .
    Which enrages the people who care about the issue. The rage is then used to prove how independent the ironist is, taking the heat and telling the truth.
    .
    Every practitioner of fluff reporting draws strong reactions because events have to be trimmed, sliced or just plain distorted so the account seems more ironical rather than ideological– i.e. biased. This trimming and fiddling with the facts doesn’t matter to people who don’t care about the issue being trivialized, and it’s to the benefit of those on the “other” side of whomever was taken down a notch by it. So they don’t squeal.
    .
    That leaves the fluffster and (in the fluffster’s mind) partisans upset by a tweaking.

    Isn’t it great how inconsequential news items can be predictably exploited by the political press corps to advertise their “objectivity”?
    .
    Isn’t it wonderful how the rightists have figured out how to exploit the political press corps’ increasingly desperate need to identify itself as distinct from those whom they cover?
    .
    Aren’t we all so much better off for this arrangement?

  • textee

    MIchael Scherer asserts: “Up until recently, Van Jones, who is widely respected as an environmental activist, ….”

    Van Jones “is widely respected as an environmental activist” by whom? Answer: Whack job 9/11 Truther conspiracy theorists (who comprise 61% of the Democrat party) and other tree hugging fanatics, particularly those in the Washington press corps.

    BTW, this is a favorite technique of members of the Washington press corps to allege, with no evidence, that someone (i.e., a leftist) is “widely respected”.

  • ogliberal

    I don’t know enough about Van Jones to provide a full list. And I know saying that Al Gore is a fan of his work won’t mean squat to you since Al is just an elitist, lying, tree-hugging hypocrite. (He did win the Nobel…o, but wait, that’s jus some socialist/commie award given out to extreme radical lefties) But here’s Meg Whitman – Republican candidate for governor in California and one of Mitt Romney’s and John McCain’s BFF – on Van Jones:
    ….
    “There’s a guy over in Oakland, I think his name is Van Jones. And he and I were on a cruise last summer in the Arctic, on climate change. And I got to know him very well. And a lot of the work he’s doing to enfranchise broader communities I’m a big fan of. He’s doing a marvelous job… I’m a huge fan of his. He is very bright, very articulate, very passionate. I think he is exactly right.”
    ….
    But of course Mitt Romney and John McCain are just flaming liberals disguised as Republicans so Meg Whitman if probably the type of woman who would chain herself to a tree to prevent it from getting cut down while reciting Marx aloud from memory.

  • shepherdwong

    “How can the administration tolerate somebody who subscribes to a different insane conspiracy theory, as a senior adviser?”
    .
    My god, how can the press corps. of the most powerful nation on earth be so logically and rationally challenged? It’s no longer a bug, it’s a feature.
    .
    “Birtherism” is “insane” because there is proof of Obama’s birth. “Trutherism” isn’t the same thing at all as long as it merely asks the question – and doesn’t state unknowable things – because there is no proof that Bush Administration officials didn’t know that an attack was coming. Considering that they were warned weeks before that, “…bin Laden [is] determined to strike US,” and the repeated, proven lies they told about their lack of intentions to invade Iraq, it’s not even very hard to believe.

  • textee

    ogliberal:

    Well said. Welcome to the pro-America community.

  • ogliberal

    Lest anybody think that my reply to textee was a full-on defense of Jones, it was not. If the guy is a Truther – and I’m sorry but it looks like he is/was – then he’s got to go. I have no patience for that BS and there’s no room for it in the administration. The fact that he once held communist/Marxist beliefs doesn’t bother me. (and no, it’s not because I’m a commie – remember that many of the founding fathers of the neo-con movement were commies…people change, beliefs and ideologies change) He called Republican a**holes? Well, good for him, because that’s true of about 95% of the GOP members of Congress. (and that’s who he was talking about…not rank-and-file members of the party) But I can’t excuse even brief/minimal ties to the Truther movement.

    The worst part of this is that Obama is going to have to cut this guy loose. It will be yet another case of Obama caving to the rantings and ravings of the right. It will be viewed as a big win for Glenn Beck. In this case, doing what the wingnuts want would be the right thing to do not because he’s afraid of the wingers but because no Truther should be a member of the administration. The problem is that the WH and the Dems, since earlier this year, have capitulated to the wingnuts in many cases where they should have just told them to shove off. It makes it look as if the crazies are winning…as if they are running the show. And in a way, they are. But you can’t finally decide to draw the line with Van Jones….it ain’t worth the fight.

  • pafro

    As I noted in the above thread. Minnesota Governor and rumored presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty is musing that Obama asks schoolkids to write to him so he can collect their addresses and use them for some sinister purpose:
    http://is.gd/2SZ35
    The crazy person is going to run for president and be given all sorts of respectful and deferential treatment by the Time Magazine’s of the world.
    Meanwhile, the Van Jones guy who signed a petition and thought invading Iraq was a stupid idea is going to be forced to resign because he is controversial.

  • moderatelyinterested

    Square1 at 3.1 above-

    You have called people “morons” at least three times this week (including your comment about Beck misspelling “oligarchy”), but you keep writing it as “morans”.

    Just trying to be helpful.

  • dollared

    This is the politics of personal destruction, as practiced by smear artists Fox News and their fascist henchmen.

    If Obama wants civil discourse and honest discussion on the facts, he should support Van Jones, who has been honest and clear about his opinions – and that is not a crime or a disqualification for office (remember F#$K you, Dick Cheney?).

    Obama needs to hold firm. Feeding the trolls just makes them bigger.

  • pafro

    I don’t know what the definition of the Truthers is, but I think they are the people who are convinced that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon and that Bush. pulled off 9/11 to enact martial law/one world government/Revelations/etc.
    The people that indulge themselves in that stuff are total morons.
    I don’t think for a second that this Van Jones guy was into any of that.
    I get sense from reading a little bit of this stuff that he shared concerns with people like myself that there was a lot of funny stuff going on with the U.S. and Brits looking the other way about possible terrorist ties and high ranking Saudi officials (or UAE officials etc.). The fact that this is related to the oil business, which relates to national security, and happened when a guy whose family has extensive ties to the Saudis via the oil patch was President is bound up in all this; it means that a lot of people think some sketchy stuff happened or hasn’t been explained.
    People also had (and still do) have genuine concerns about how badly the Bush Administration was blowing off things like ‘bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.’.
    This stuff is not Trutherism, and if it is, then I am a Truther as well.

  • pafro

    I think it is an ode to this internet tradition:
    http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-moran.htm

  • ogliberal

    “Obama needs to hold firm. Feeding the trolls just makes them bigger.”

    I would agree but as I noted above, there are too many red flags with this guy for this to be the case where the administration finally draws a line in the sand. He’s just not that important in the bigger scheme of things – he’s minor advisor who probably hasn’t spoke to the president since he got the job. You can find another green jobs guy/gal.

    But as I also noted above, the problem is that the administration and the Dems have caved in to the loonies far to many times in the past, mostly in cases where the response should have been, “Thank you for your opinion…now eff off.” This is where that comes back to bite your in the arse…in a case where you really do need to cut your losses, it looks like just another victory – in a long line of them – for the Beck Brigade.

    And given this guy’s past – he seems to have taken part in just about every movement on the left in a very short time period – my guess is that his “trutherism” is not just confined to legitimate questions. Scherer was right in saying this guy is a respected environmental activits – he is. (see my quote above from Meg Whitman) And he may be great at what he does on that front. He can continue doing it – just outside of the administration. If Tom Daschle had to turn down the HHS nomination because of some relatively minor tax problems, you can’t hold fast to a guy like Van Jones.

  • shepherdwong

    “I don’t know what the definition of the Truthers is, but I think they are the people who are convinced that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon and that Bush. pulled off 9/11 to enact martial law/one world government/Revelations/etc.
    The people that indulge themselves in that stuff are total morons.
    I don’t think for a second that this Van Jones guy was into any of that.”

    .
    So, obviously, there’s a range of belief among “Truthers” from “Bush had the Trade Center and Pentagon blown up” – i.e., insane conspiracy theory – to “did Bush know about and let al Qaeda attack us?”. The latter violates Occam’s Razor by ignoring the now obvious yet still amazing levels of Bush Administration incompetence on national security, which more likely explains 9/11 but it isn’t an “insane conspiracy theory”.

  • square1

    You can find another green jobs guy/gal.
    .
    Yes, but why would you. Caving just makes Obama look weak.
    .
    my guess is that his “trutherism” is not just confined to legitimate questions.
    .
    Your guess? Your guess? You want Obama to toss members of his administration under the bus because you “guess” that he has asked “illegitimate” questions about 9/11.
    .
    I can’t tell you how little respect I have for Obama and his team right now. The GOP can say whatever the f— they want. Death panels. Rahm’s brother wants to off Grandma. Obama is a commie-Nazi who is starting his own Hitler Youth. Whatever. Obama never tells them it is beyond the pale.

    But a member of his own team signs a petition that calls for an investigation into unanswered questions about 9/11 and you “guess” that he has said much worse?

    Here’s the deal. Go find me a quote of Van Jones calling Cheney a murderer and then we’ll talk. Until then, tell Beck to go blow Limbaugh and send the pictures to Hannity.

  • textee

    For all of the Democrats who get all of their “news” from ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times and the Washington Post, what do they know about the raving, America hating, lunatic and 9/11 Truther Van Jones?

    Answer: Absolutely nothing.

    Check out the Nexis search conducted by Byron York:

    Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
    Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
    Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
    Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
    Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/The-Van-Jones-non-feeding-non-frenzy-57271402.html

  • palininatowel

    This guy was a big, big star at one time.

    Oh, wait…

    That was Van Johnson.

    My mistake.

  • http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com lawyermommy

    Oh and also about apologies. Obama had better NOT apologize for anything again for the rest of his Presidency.
    It is not the Presidential thing to do. Presidents do not repeatedly apologize for statements made or invite rabble rousers for beer.

    Most objective observers knows he means well and have confidence that he was elected because he is the best man for the job.
    He cannot please everybody and should not try. Even if things were perfect and the economy booming, there would still be those who would be spewing anti-Obama rhetoric.

    Remember, even in the face of an obvious lie, even Bill Clinton withheld his own apology until the infamous unwashed and crusty blue dress forced it out of him.
    Also to date, Cheney is running around kindle in hand “drawing pictures” still lying with great aplomb about how successful and right it is to kill people in a so called quest to obtain information.

    Let us not forget Powell who lied to the UN General Assembly about weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been gutted and their leader killed and yet we have seen no such weapons.

    So for Obama, no more apologies. Let the Right do what they are expected to do—it is their job—they are the opposition. The President should focus on doing his part and looking Presidential as he does it.

    http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

  • shepherdwong

    Gosh, is it possible that even the corporate press is finally tiring of the “conservative” empty outrage machine and constant, manifestly silly, ginned-up right-wing hissy-fits? One can only hope.

  • http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com lawyermommy

    Oh and also about apologies. Obama had better not apologize for anything again for the rest of his Presidency.
    It is not the Presidential thing to do. Presidents do not repeatedly apologize for statements made or invite rabble rousers for beer.

    Most objective observers know he means well and have confidence that he was elected because he is the best man for the job.
    He cannot please everybody and should not try. Even if things were perfect and the economy booming, there would still be those who would be spewing anti-Obama rhetoric.

    Remember, even in the face of an obvious lie, even Bill Clinton withheld his own apology until the infamous unwashed and crusty blue dress forced it out of him.
    Also to date, Cheney is running around kindle in hand “drawing pictures” still lying with great aplomb about how successful and right it is to kill people in a so called quest to obtain information.

    Let us not forget Powell who lied to the UN General Assembly about weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been gutted and their leader killed and yet we have seen no such weapons.

    So for Obama, no more apologies. Let the Right do what they are expected to do—it is their job—they are the opposition. The President should focus on doing his part and looking Presidential as he does it.

    http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

  • shepherdwong

    That was my first reaction too. Van who?
    .
    But we’d better get to the bottom of what the adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality thinks about 9/11. The professional journalists that forgot to tell you about our psychopathic president (and his paranoid/megalomaniacal sidekick), who wasn’t sure about evolution and had God whispering in his ear, need to know.

  • ogliberal

    I agree that caving makes Obama look weak. But this is the wrong fight. The guy is a lightning rod. Even if he isn’t a real truther, he’s exactly the type of guy who turns off independents and more moderate Dems. I could give a rat’s arse what the Republicans think but if you lose those other two groups, you lose elections. Unless you can come up with a legitimate defense of why Jones’ name was on that petition and evidence to back it up, the wingnuts will ride this thing for all it’s worth. And while most of the crazy arsed stuff they spew out doesn’t resonate with the indie/moderate crowd, this type of stuff will. It’s not just that he once said he held communist/Marxist views, it’s not that he was once a black nationalist, it’s not just that he called Republican arses (they are, but that’s besides the point), it’s not just that he said that white polluters are funneling pollution into black/minority communities (may be some truth to that), it’s not just that he signed his name to a petition that may have support the craziest of Truther claims. It’s that he’s done/said all of these things….and all of these revelations – and outside of the petition thing, he’s been pretty upfront about them all…he doesn’t appear to be trying to hide anything – have been brought to the forefront in the last two weeks. It’s the aggregation of all of this information, the daily revelations, that makes this a battle not worth fighting. Obama has many bigger fights on his hand and will have many more to come. His political capital is quickly running out. No reason to spend a cent of it on protecting Van Jones just because the wingers want Obama to fire him.

    Sometimes you have to look at things from outside of the perpective of a left or right partisan. To a non-partisan, politically ambivalent person, this guy just looks like bad news. Save your energy for the healthcare reform fight. I’m angrier at the fact that the Dems have appeared to have caved to the “death panel” insanity than I would be if the WH let Van Jones go.

    The tragedy of all of this is that Obama and the Dems should have held their “take one for the team” cards for situations like this, where things look pretty bad even in the eyes of a non-partisan and where your losses are minimal. (again, not hard to find somebody else to do Van Jones’ job) The problem I have with them – and it’s a big one – is that they’ve caved numerous times to the wingnuts on crazy stuff – ie, death panels – minor issues – ie, Daschle’s tax problems – and legitimate issues that would actually do a lot of good for our country – ie, the public option.

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    Scherer writes: “Up until recently, Van Jones, who is widely respected as an environmental activist, has been targeted by conservative pundits, who argue that his impolitic remarks, and the fact that he once identified as a “communist,” raises concerns about a secret agenda in the Obama White House, a suggestion that is unhinged, and not only because President Obama is in no way pursuing any policies that can be accurately characterized as “communist.” Jones, for his own part, no longer espouses “communism,” and his role, as an adviser to the CEQ, puts him at a far remove from major questions of economic policy.”

    But again, Van Jones said in 2008: “Right after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat if the civil rights leaders had jumped out and said, ‘OK now we want reparations for slavery, we want redistribution of all the wealth, and we want to legalize mixed marriages.’ If we’d come out with a maximum program the very next day, they’d been laughed at. Instead they came out with a very minimum. ‘We just want to integrate these buses.’

    “But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we’re not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that’s a process and I think that’s what’s great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”

    ——————————————-

    That’s Jones saying plainly that his work has a hidden radical kernel with the intent of putting a complete revolution on the table. He’s saying plainly that everything he’s asking for now is a trojan horse.

  • pafro

    The wingnuts at Little Green Footballs are saying that this Truther petition was sold under false pretenses.
    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34594_Truther_Document_Signatories_Say_They_Were_Misled
    This is silly.
    Again, we have powerful Republicans like Pawlenty saying the president asked 4th graders to write to him so he could cull their addresses and do something evil with them, but no one is trying to chase him out of the political debate for being insane. Instead some guy who tries to create a green economy is crazy.

  • bentonf

    Yep, that’s true: wingnuts won’t stand for anyone in government supporting outlandish, crackpot theories or thoroughly debunked tin-foil-hat delusions. Just wouldn’t be Ahmurikin.

    Oh, wait….

  • rustyreturns

    “Most objective observers know he means well and have confidence that he was elected because he is the best man for the job.”
    .
    I have certainly seen many things written on this site to date, but i have to say, this one is most certainly the most rediculous.
    .
    “Best” man for the job? You do need anti-psychotic medications Mommy Dearest.
    .
    The most unqualified man to have ever been elected to the Presidency, perhaps. But best? A joke at least.
    .
    Hitler and Stalin were also once known as “the best”, We can only hope history does not repeat itself.

  • shepherdwong

    Yeah, FYI: I’m pretty sure that if you’re trying to do that Trojan Horse thingy as a strategy, you don’t tell people about it. Is every right-winger on the planet a paranoid lunatic?

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    Jones says we must move beyond the “eco-capitalism” he’s pushing now – that’s just the radical kernel.

    Nobody who has seen what he’s said over his career can be in serious doubt as to whether the Green Jobs Czar intends to move beyond the “eco-” or the “capitalism” in “eco-capiatalism”.

  • slowp

    I really don’t know who this Jones guy is or what he does, and I thought BHO should dump him, but I just googled him and this changed my mind:

    “Jones is under heavy fire from the right for among other things, a video of him saying…that Republicans are “assh*les.”

    Now I say: “DEFEND JONES AT ALL COSTS; THE GOV’T NEEDS MORE TRUTH-TELLERS LIKE HIM!!!”

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    I agree with Van Jones about Republicans on that one, and it is ridiculous that that comment receives major media focus while the really evil things he says are almost entirely ignored.

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    Little Green Footballs also points out that Van Jones is a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Science – a crackpot science foundation. See for yourself on their web site.

    I personally don’t think Jones is stupid enough to believe in “9/11 Truth” or “Noetic Science”.

    No, Van Jones believes in forging strategic alliances with Useful Idiots.

  • kryptik1

    Meanwhile, we have unabashed birthers in Congress, we have Glenn Beck getting millions of viewers a day to witness his spiral into madness while successfully convincing cads that everyone else is insane, we have Cheney stating that the rule of law is an obscene political power play and that torture is ok even if it goes to an extreme…and they’re repeatedly legitimized, by the GOP and the media.

    It’s taken a month (if that) for Van Jones to be called every other name under the sun and his name made political poison. Regardless of what is true or not…how the hell can the right manage to poison almost anyone left of Limbaugh within a matter of weeks while we can’t even get the morons in Congress to fully accept that Obama isn’t a swarthy illegal immigrant?

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    What Van Jones said immediately after calling republicans a-holes was far more telling:

    “That’s a technical, political science term. And — Barack O — Barack Obama’s not an a-hole. So — now, I will say this: I can be an a-hole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity. How’s that capitalism working for ya?”

    “Uppity”; yeah I get it.

    It’s odd though, he doesn’t sound like a friend of capitalism. But of course that was way, way, WAY back in March 2009.

  • michaelfury

    Instead of demonizing the signatories, why not answer the questions listed on the petition to demonstrate how “delusional” they are?

    “11. Why did the 911 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?”

    Many more questions have arisen since 2004. Like this one: What is unignited nano-thermite incendiary (state-of-the-art DoD research in 2001) doing in samples of the WTC dust?

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/the-rest-is-silence/

  • michaelfury

    “7. How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA’s radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?”

    To which one might add: If the aircraft was not tracked by radar, how did Cheney monitor it’s approach to the Pentagon, according to Norman Mineta?

    And this one: Why would the Pentagon let its clocks get six minutes slow?

    http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/clock-stoppers/

  • http://jtk3.wordpress.com/ John T. Kennedy

    This is why Obama will have to dump Jones, because his most vehement defenders will be 9/11 truthers and radicals that he doesn’t want to be seen to be associated with.

  • yoshiattack

    I knew the truthers would finally crawl out of the woodwork.

  • http://washingtoncensus-polls.com/glenn-beck-gets-first-scalp-van-jones-resigns Washington Census Polls » Blog Archive » Glenn Beck Gets First Scalp: Van Jones Resigns

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://teacherreaderwriter.wordpress.com/ Shakespeare in GA

    Jones quit. Game over. Until the next witch-hunt commences.

  • http://www.x10dur.net/wordpress/2009/09/06/glenn-beck-gets-first-scalp-van-jones-resigns/ Glenn Beck Gets First Scalp: Van Jones Resigns « My Hot Topics

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://www.doispontozero.org/?p=10445 Glenn Beck Gets First Scalp: Van Jones Resigns | DoisPontoZero

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://lauraysbusinessjournal.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/obamas-green-czar-resigns/ Obama’s Green Czar Resigns « Lauray's Business Journal

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://www.tipte.com/2009/09/glenn-beck-gets-first-scalp-van-jones-resigns/ Glenn Beck Gets First Scalp: Van Jones Resigns | TipTe.com

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://www.celebritypaycut.com/warming-activists/thoughts-on-van-jones-resignation Celebrity Paycut – Encouraging celebrities all over the world to save us from global warming by taking a paycut.

    [...] Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support. [...]

  • http://joshuakahnrussell.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/on-van-jones-resignation/ On Van Jones’ Resignation « praxis makes perfect.

    [...] Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support. [...]

  • http://mikeboyd.com.au/ET/climate-progress/van-jones-resigns Van Jones resigns | Climate Vine

    [...] fate was sealed when Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to defend him at a recent press [...]

  • http://rartee.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/when-the-left-media-finally-addresses-jones-its-like-this/ When the left media finally addresses Jones, it’s like this: « Diary of a Mad Conservative

    [...] From Time magazine [...]

  • http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/09/06/a-few-more-thoughts-on-on-van-jones-resignation-glenn-beck-and-right-wing-populism/ A few more thoughts on On Van Jones’ Resignation, Glenn Beck, and Right Wing “populism” « It’s Getting Hot In Here

    [...] I think David Roberts’ Thoughts on Van Jones’ Resignation piece on Grist offers some useful thoughts that I’ll share here: Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support. [...]

  • http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/07/on-van-jones-resignation-glenn-beck-and-right-wing-populism/ The Understory » On Van Jones’ Resignation, Glenn Beck, and Right Wing “populism”

    [...] Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support. [...]

  • http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/theclog/2009/09/08/score-for-beck-van-jones-is-out/ Creative Loafing Charlotte » theCLog » Blog Archive » Score for Beck: Van Jones is out

    [...] After all of the pushing Progressives have done to oust Glenn Beck from his throne room at Fox News, Beck succeeds in securing a resignation from one of his White House targets: Van Jones, Special Adviser for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality. Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support. [...]

  • http://dudems.com/2009/09/08/johnvanjonesresignation/ Van Jones’s Resignation: Cowering in Front of the Real Crazies « DU Dems

    [...] in Jones’s past. As the controversy intensified in the preceding days, the Obama administration provided little to no support for Jones before his resignation, and offered little regret in its aftermath. [...]

  • http://rosemarieberger.com/2009/09/09/green-super-hero-van-jones-vs-the-kryptonite-of-the-far-right/ Green “Super Hero” Van Jones VS the Kryptonite of the Far Right — rosemarieberger.com

    [...] a senior advisor on the CEQ. After he called President Obama a “racist” who was “trying to enact a socialist agenda“, Beck’s show became the target of an effort to get advertisers to drop sponsorship. [...]

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