Van Jones a "Truther" Communist?

This is Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar for ObamaTeam, a guy who is making a six-figure salary paid for by our tax dollars. He's a self-avowed communist and a signer of something called the "911 Truth Statement" in 2004 that, among other things, accused the Bush administration of having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and stated that Bush "consciously failed" to act. So Van Jones was one of the signatories of a petition and major push for investigation into the collaboration of the Bush administration with the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Americans ever committed on American soil.

Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist, Fox News commentator, and psychiatrist, says this: Van Jones is beyond extremism and radicalism. His views are "psychotic paranoia." [Psychiatrists don't throw terms like that around willy-nilly like lay people do, so I paid attention when he said that.] Continues Krauthammer, "It’s a malignant kind of politics, and you’ve got to ask yourself, in the White House, if you didn’t know he’s a Truther, then you’ve got to ask him to politely resign. And if you did, is that acceptable in the government of the United States?"

One of the more cynical bloggers on the right is convinced that, instead of a breakdown in the ObamaTeam vetting process, Van Jones's hiring can best be explained as a goof by Obama to see just how much crap the media will let him get away with.  “Hey Rahm — bet you 20 bucks I can get a Truther communist appointed to an environmental oversight position.”

Question of the day: What did the White House know about Van Jones’s Trutherism and when did they know it? Charles Krauthammer says that the question of Jones's communism isn't all that troubling, seeing communism in 2009 as something of a "pathetic anachronism." But Krauthammer sees the revelation about the Green Jobs Czar Jones being a Truther as “devastating.”

Does Barack Obama believe that it’s acceptable to have paranoid conspiracists in high-level appointments, or was the White House simply too incompetent to properly research Jones in the vetting process? Because it comes down to those two options, and regardless of what we think of Jones, the blame for him being in the White House falls squarely on Obama.

Van Jones has apparently been part of the Truther Squad since its inception. In January of 2002, Jones took part in a march on Senator Dianne Feinstein's San Francisco office to "Demand Congressional Inquiry of 9/11." This is part of a manifesto that the group put out that day:

• The Bush administration has institutionalized racial profiling and is secretly rounding up thousands of Arab Americans and other people of Middle Eastern background.
• At the same time, the Bush administration is giving billions to the military, offering huge bailouts and tax incentives to corporations and the wealthy, while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of laid off workers, and cutting social services.
• The Bush administration is clearly more interested in controlling the oil resources of Central Asia than in "ridding the world of terrorism or terrorists" which it has funded, trained, and used for decades through the C.I.A.

The group then goes on to "demand answers" to the following questions [there were many others; I chose only a few]:

• Who created, trained and funded the Al Qaeda Network?
• What is the relationship between Bin Laden, his family and the Bush family and the Carlyle Group?
• Who actually was in control of the "hijacked planes"? [Note the "scare quotes."]
• Did the CIA have foreknowledge of the attack. . .?
• If the US is serious about ridding the world of terrorism, why do we continue to fund and train terrorists?
• Why intimidate professors from speaking out against this war? [Really? Are you kidding?]

No one will buy the idea that Obama is a moderate while he’s employing a man who thinks that George Bush murdered 3,000 people so he could grab oil and poppies for heroine from Central Asia. The man who knowingly employs a nutcase as one of his close advisers will himself look more like a nutcase than a moderate.

Update: So far, the ObamaTeam isn't backing away from Van Jones. Soon, the issue will no longer be "Van Jones" ["scare quotes" intentional]. The issue will be who O'Bummer willingly and knowlingly surrounds himself with. He was given a pass during the 2008 campaign because, after all, we were doing something historic, we were electing the first black president. Well, that pass has apparently expired--not with the mainstream media, who continue to cover for ObamaTeam, but with many, many "regular citizens." Good luck with continuing down that road, Barry--the road of "I never heard him say that" or "He must not have been vetted properly." This appointment of a radical racist nutjob is on you, Champ.

By the way, do you ever remembering seeing George W Bush come off of the helicopter and wave to the crowd with such a pissy expression? Serious sometimes, yes, but pissy like this, no. Something tells me O'Bummer isn't having much fun these days, despite his two recent vacations. I'd like to think I could smile a little better than this if I'd just spent $50,000 for the week to rent a compound on Martha's Vineyard. Boo-freakin'-hoo, Obama. I guess being a grown-up for the first time in your life really sucks.