The embarrassing truth behind the conservative obsession with Obama's patriotism.

Last week Rudy Giuliani caught some flak for suggesting President Obama doesn't love America. Rather than admit like Giuliani himself did before making the comment that this was a horrible thing to say the fine folks at Fox News have doubled down offering "proof" of how the president just doesn't love America as much as conservatives.

To no one's surprise the man driving this clown car of desperation is Sean Hannity. On his February 25th show Hannity devoted almost eight minutes of Fox News air time to convince viewers that Barack Obama isn't a true patriot.

He starts the piece by showing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's response to Rudy Giuliani's comments. While Farrakhan's statements are ignorant and offensive comparing Farrakhan to Giuliani is laughable. Giuliani is part of the establishment as is evidenced by his time in office, his bids for congress and president, his speaking engagement at the Republican National Convention, his role as "insider" for Fox News and his place in conservative lore as "America's mayor".

At best Farrakhan is an outsider when it comes to the Democratic establishment however most would consider him a fringe bomb thrower. Suggesting Farrakhan's response to Giuliani somehow represents the vast majority of liberals tells you all you need to know about how seriously Hannity is about this topic.

Of course recognizing how weak such an argument would be Hannity then ran a montage of statements made by the president that supposedly confirm the president's distain for the country he was twice elected to lead. These included comments such as:

"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

"The struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

"There is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

"Our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint but from our willingness to rush into military adventures."

Never mind the fact that there is plenty of tape showing the president extolling America's "goodness and greatness and generosity and sacrifice for the cause liberty worldwide" and never mind that these are statements of facts not some sort of hate speech the problem here are not the president's words but the conservative's insistence that recognizing our faults and attempting to do better is somehow a negative.

These are the same people who have multiple media outlets dedicated to telling American's just how bad the country is. These are the same people who believe that telling the blunt truth, no matter how hurtful, is the right thing to do. These are the same people who hate the "everyone gets a trophy mentality" because kids need to learn from their failures. Yet somehow every time the president is the one offering the message these people throw all their beliefs out the window and feign outrage.

One wonders if these same conservatives were infuriated when Ronald Reagan said "Many of us are unhappy about our ... diminishing prestige around the globe, about the weakness in our economy and national security that jeopardizes world peace, about our lack of strong, straight-forward leadership." or when he asked questions like "Is our nation stronger and more capable of leading the world toward peace and freedom or is it weaker?", "Are you more confident that our economy will create productive work for our society or are you less confident?", and "Are you convinced that we have earned the respect of the world and our allies, or has America's position across the globe diminished?"

Are these examples that Reagan didn't love America or do they show a man identifying issues that require change?

Of course no critique of Obama's love of country is complete without bringing up Michelle Obama's remark from 2008 stating this was the first time in her adult life she was proud of her country. Despite showing the clip Hannity still seems clueless as to its meaning. There are probably few who think this was a wise choice of words however Hannity's take that Michelle Obama is "not proud of WWII and America beating back fascism and Nazism and imperial Japan? Not proud of walking on the moon?" is mindboggling. Zero of these events happened in Michelle Obama's adult life. They are not covered by her statement. If you are going to skewer her for her words then at least pay attention to the words she is saying.

Beyond that, the irony of using this quote as proof that Barack Obama doesn't love the country while simultaneously defending Giuliani's statement with "he could have used different words" is just outstanding. Both Giuliani and Obama "clarified" their statements within days of making them. For Hannity to pretend one is a deeply held belief while the other is a simple misunderstanding is clear slap in the face to the Fox News "Fair and Balanced" tagline.

Despite the fact that in less than eight minutes Hannity was able to prove himself as morally bankrupt this treasure trove of slanted misinformation isn't even the worst part about the segment. No the worst part is how much it exposes conservatives.

There are no shortage of issues that Sean Hannity and the two prominent Republicans he brought on his show (Bobby Jindal and Darrell Issa) could have discussed yet they chose to wax poetic about their opinion of the president's patriotism.

Hating Barack Obama certainly paid off well in 2014 so it's no surprise that Republicans would look to replicate this success in 2016 but this tactic also tells you how little the Republican party has to offer the country in terms of actual policy. They can't make the economy an issue because most of the president's policies have worked. They've tried for years to tear down the Affordable Care Act however polls show American's don't support the Republican repeal plan. The same is also true of the Republican position on Immigration reform, marriage equality, military spending, abortion, taxing the rich, net neutrality, background checks for guns, climate change, and Medicare vouchers.

The reality is that Republicans really have no other choice than to stoop to character assassination because if they are forced to run on actual ideas in 2016 they would not only lose the White House but Capitol Hill as well.

Christians to blame for the "War on Christianity"

Some Christians believe that being anti-Christian is the only acceptable form of bigotry left in America. Outside of the absurdity of the vast majority of the claims offered as "proof" of this fallacy the hypocrisy necessary to make such a claim is phenomenal.

For example noted conservative pundit Ann Coulter once stated "liberals always play the victim in order to advance, win advantages and oppress others". While such tactics are hardly exclusive to liberals the supposed "War on Christianity" represents the pinnacle of all self ascribed pity parties.

Christians comprise just over 78% of the U.S. population which is a significantly higher percentage of the population than the "angry atheists" who only account for 1.6%. What are these poor Christians to do when faced with such overwhelming odds against them?

The problem is that Christians have spent so much time pretending to be victims that they have become oblivious to their own indiscretions.

Spurned HGTV stars David and Jason Benham offer and excellent illustration of this point. The brothers took to Fox News to pen an article discussing how they were dropped from the station for standing by their "Biblical beliefs". Of course the problem wasn't that they were against marriage equality. The problem was that they funded and organized an anti-gay rally because ironically they felt that these "militant gay activists" shouldn't be given the opportunity to express their view that there is nothing "demonic", "veil", or "destructive" about being gay.

There are millions of Christians who don't agree with same sex marriage but only a portion of them shamefully resort to using the bible as justification for their hate speech. Of course the Benham brothers are hardly the first high profile personalities to lose their job because of controversial statements. The fact that they are Christians is secondary to the fact that they have aggressively opposed the gay community in the past. Their actions, not their beliefs, cost them their potential television gig.

Having said that they also seem to be very confused about what is discrimination and what is not. In their article they use three examples of instances where they feel a company should be allowed to deny someone service.

"My brother and I are perfectly okay with a gay owned t-shirt company refusing to make t-shirts that say, “Homosexuality is sin.” And we’re fine with a Jewish baker refusing to cater an event on the Sabbath. And we’d certainly agree with the gun range owner refusing to let self-identifying ISIS members practice shooting at his facility."

First it should be noted that a self identifying ISIS member would be arrested not refused service. However it should be noted that a public gun range would need to be able to show that there is a "legitimate business reason" to deny anyone service.

Second the Jewish baker isn't discriminating when they decide to refuse to cater on the Sabbath. They are simply setting their hours of operation and those hours apply to all customers equally. The discrimination occurs when you don't treat all groups equally.

Finally, the T-Shirt company is already protected from making shirts that require them to including wording they find offensive. That is the companies right of free speech. The T-Shirt company in this case is not refusing the customer service based on who they are they have decide not to produce a product they find offensive. This is why the public cake baker cannot deny service to the gay couple but they can refuse to make a cake that includes words they find objectionable. Denying service based on the person is not the same as denying service based on the content of the service. It may seem like a minor difference however it is very important distinction that the Benham brothers don't appear to understand.

Beyond this propensity for misunderstanding the legal requirements of a business that serves the public, there are others who believe that Christians are ostracized at far greater rates than any other segment of the population. One imagines there are plenty of Muslims, LGBT individuals, and African and Latino Americans that find this suggestion laughable but even the Atheists that are supposedly repressing Christians face as many if not more harassment in the U.S. today. Polls on American attitudes towards various segments of the population as well as other data show that the bias against Atheists is actually one of the most acceptable forms of discrimination.

Todd Starnes, for example, has become the media's resident raconteur of anti-Christian fables and regularly elicits anger towards non-Christians by providing half of the story. His faux outrage includes stories like 'Why did Disney block God?', 'Town told to keep Christ out of Christmas parade', 'Students opposed to LGBT agenda shamed in classroom', and 'Student reprimanded for saying “God Bless America”'. Conspicuously absent from Starnes' list of concerns are stories like 'Christian Professor Gets Fired for 'Trying on Atheism', 'Indiana Teacher Allegedly Fired For Being An Atheist', 'Atheists Are Banned From Holding Public Office In Seven US States', 'Atheist Student Gets Death Threats Over Prayer Banner' and 'Student Forced to Stand For Pledge of Allegiance'. If Starnes is such a religious rights crusader he should be equally infuriated at stories of discrimination against non-Christians.

The question people like Starnes should really ask themselves is: if non-Christians should be tolerant of Christian symbols and references in public spaces then why shouldn't Christian's be tolerant of public spaces being void of all religious paraphernalia. After all who does it hurt if the areas owned by everyone are free from all religious trappings?

The reality is that all non-Christians are asking for is equal treatment. These continued battles are simply a reaction to religious overreach that the courts have declared illegal. If Christians just stopped advocating for public religious observations the so called anti-Christian behavior would all but disappear. Unfortunately asking these Christian activists to apply the constitutional right of religious freedom equally to all Americans will undoubtedly result in more errant claims of anti-Christianity because Christian victimhood is great for business.

How money can fix public education

Noted conservative political activist Star Parker recently penned an article extoling the virtues of legislation being offered at the federal level to let education dollars follow students to schools beyond their local public school. The problem is school choice is just another red herrings that conservatives continue to offer to fix the manufactured "crisis in education".

So while Parker praises the Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Luke Messer for sponsoring what she calls a "courageous proposal" the question becomes what is so courageous about elected officials proposing a bill that pushes a conservative idea that is more than half a century old? Perhaps what she means is that it is courageous for these men to back such a solution when studies find "there seem to be few apparent benefits of school of choice" and "there was no evidence of program effects on math scores".

Of course choice falls in a long line of conservative ideas that don't actually improve education. Ending tenure doesn't increase test scores. Despite what you might have heard schools win 75% of their cases against tenured teachers. In fact data show non-tenured teachers are less likely to lose their job for poor performance than tenured teachers.

Studies show that the majority of charter schools perform at or below the level of their public school counterparts.

Decades of research show that merit pay doesn't improve student perform.

Even though the states with the high teacher union rates get better results than the states with the low rates, conservatives still pretend that unions are somehow ruining public education.

The problem with the conservative agenda regarding public education is that they spend so much time and effort pushing ideas that don't actually improve education that this miss out on things that really do work.

For instance data show that in schools where 20% or less of the students are impoverished the U.S. ranks number one in the world. This suggests that what U.S. schools are doing is working even without choice, charters or a war on teachers. Given that the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that actually spends less money on poor students than wealthy students perhaps legislators like Ted Cruz should focus on leveling the playing field or providing extra support to underprivileged children.

Studies also show that when students track their own progress there is a sizable increase in their achievement. This should be an idea that conservatives can get behind since it meets their desire for "personal responsibility".

Research finds that incorporating technology in the education process results in "significant gains in student achievement and boost engagement, particularly among students most at risk". Unfortunately many schools struggle to find the funds as per pupil spending has fallen in recent years.

Some analysis indicate that teacher mentoring programs can help new teachers to become better at their job. Given the impact a good teacher can have this additional support is a superior alternative to the fire and replace method conservative politicians have been offering recently.

For a group who is so concerned about how their tax dollars are being spent with regards to public education it is somewhat surprising that they continue to back ideas that have such a low return on investment. If Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Luke Messer were really courageous they would challenge the decades old conservative education reform status quo and support changes that are based on academic success and proven by scholarly research.

Of course the real problem here is not that conservatives aren't aware of how little the policies they champion do for children. It's that all of their reform ideas are politically motivated because helping children is far less important that weakening teachers unions that almost exclusively back Democrats and enriching the for profit education business that mainly donates to Republicans. Take the money out of politics and watch how much smarter politicians become.

Conservatives abandon values to suppport charter school

Conservatives are always in favor of using free market principles except when the disagree with they outcome of a free market based decision. Case in point: a recent Detroit News editorial titled 'Board wrong to demolish school'.

The issue at hand is the decision by the Saginaw public schools board of education to demolish a school building the district inherited back in 2009 rather than sell it off. Given that the district is working to eliminate a considerable amount of debt selling the building would seem like a good idea however the district has already agreed to sell another property which more than covers their outstanding debt.

The problem is that the organization that bid to purchase the building happens to be a charter school operation. This means that everyone who believes choice and charters are the answer to the manufactured "crisis in education", despite the data that show neither idea actually improves educational outcomes, have come out of the woodworks attempting to shame the district into accepting a deal that might be bad for business.

The hypocritical rhetoric starts with the phrase "competition can be uncomfortable". However true this statement may be the author should also recognize that in a free market, corporations go out of their way to eliminate competition not promote it. If Walmart were moving down the street would they sell their old building to Target? Absolutely not. It would be a stupid business decision.

Of course opponents also presume to know the details of this potential deal when they claim with absolute certainty that turning down this offer "was clearly a bad decision". Not mentioned in the piece is the fact that part of the property the charter school wanted to purchase is currently being rented by Delta College. The article also doesn't bother to consider the value of the property after the building is removed. If the district can sell the land to the college that is currently renting space or another buyer for more than the charter schools offer then then selling low to a potential competitor becomes an even worse decision according to the free market.

Beyond this the article never bothers to question the motives or sincerity of the organization behind the press release that the media has picked up on. The Michigan Association of Public School Academies is a company that makes money off representing charter schools much like a trade union. In their rebuke of the districts decision they assert that the Saginaw school board is keeping "a perfectly good facility out of the hands of another public school — a charter school". Given that the roof of the building collapsed last year and the facility has mold issues it seems like the term "a perfectly good facility" is a bit of an embellishment meant to make the board seem petty and irresponsible.

Having said that, the district still has a few months before it has to do anything regarding the demolition. Perhaps they are just using a free market negotiating tactic to increase the offer from the charter school operators. Walking away from an offer is a textbook method of getting the best deal.

There is also some question as to the value of this particular charter school operator. In the most recent top to bottom rankings, Saginaw schools had two facilities that ranked in the top 98th percentile while the charter school was in the 20th percentile. Perhaps the district just feels this operator doesn't offer a better education to the students most likely to make the switch.

But even more confusing coming from conservatives is the belief that "the Legislature should find a way to force better use of public school buildings". Apparently those outside of the district who did not participate in the negotiations, the school board meetings or the decision making process ride on such a high horse they don't need actual data or information to determine they know what's best for Saginaw residents. Yes, the people who believe in local control are now arguing that the state should force a locally elected board that decided to unanimously reject a charter school offer to accept a potentially bad business deal simply because they received a press release from an organization they support - no questions asked.

It's certainly possible that the best deal for the Saginaw residents is to sell this building to a charter school company but if the conservative media really wants to be mad about something it should be mad at how easily conservatives abandon their core values to argue for a system that benefits corporations far more than students. That or they have to admit that supporting policies that help the rich get richer is really their only core value.