The Commentariat -- Jan. 16, 2013
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Tom Friedman's & Maureen Dowd's columns.
Michael Shear & Peter Baker of the New York Times: "At a White House event at noon, Mr. Obama announced plans to introduce legislation by next week that includes a ban on assault weapons, limits on high-capacity magazines, expanded background checks for gun purchases and new gun trafficking laws to crack down on the spread of weapons across the country. He also promised to act without Congressional approval to increase the enforcement of existing gun laws and improve the flow of information among federal agencies to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who shouldn't have them":
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Wednesday will formally announce the most aggressive and expansive national gun-control agenda in generations as he presses Congress to mandate background checks for all firearms buyers and prohibit assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips." ...
... Michael Cooper, et al., of the New York Times on the range of gun laws & regulations President Obama is likely to propose today. ...
** Philip Rucker: "The National Rifle Association released a new video on its Web site Tuesday calling President Obama an 'elitist hypocrite' for having Secret Service protection of his daughters at school but saying he was 'skeptical' about installing armed guards in all schools.... 'Are the president's kids more important than yours' a deep-voiced narrator asks. 'Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he's just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.'" Includes video of the ad. CW: this ad should enrage you. The NRA drums of fear of Obama, the better to sell guns to paranoid militiamen, then complains Obama's children need protection from gun-toting paranoids. And he is the hypocrite? ...
Update: Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly. -- Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary
Frederka Schouten of USA Today: "In the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre, the national debate raging over high-profile issues such as proposals to ban assault weapons also is bringing fresh attention to an array of little-known laws approved by Congress -- some at the behest of the powerful National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups -- that either ease restrictions on firearms or clamp down on the ability of the government to regulate guns."
... Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: New York "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law a sweeping package of gun-control measures on Tuesday, significantly expanding a ban on assault weapons and making New York the first state to change its laws in response to the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. Mr. Cuomo signed the bill less than an hour after the State Assembly approved it by a 104-to-43 vote on the second full day of the 2013 legislative session. The State Senate, which had in the past resisted more restrictive gun laws, approved the measure 43 to 18 on Monday night." ...
... Dan Amira of New York: "With President Obama now contemplating up to nineteen executive orders to combat gun violence, conservatives have started to flip out in characteristic form. Kentucky senator Rand Paul has accused Obama of acting 'like a king or a monarch.' South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan declared last week, 'We live in a republic, not a dictatorship.' Mike Huckabee proclaimed that the White House has 'nothing but contempt for the Constitution' and seeks to 'trump ... the checks and balances of power in which no branch could act unilaterally.' Texas congressman Steve Stockman has already threatened impeachment.... If it's the use of executive orders in particular that's getting critics all riled up, though, then it's worth noting that Obama has used this lever of presidential power less frequently than every other president in modern times." ...
... You knew Maureen Dowd would go bananas over President strong> Obama's news conference, and she does not disappoint. Dowd implies that Stockman, et al., would never have behaved so badly if only Obama had heeded "A Greek chorus of historians and pols [who] have been urging the president to spend more time schmoozing with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as other presidents like Jefferson, Lincoln and L.B.J., did to get their way." ...
... ** Now read Dana Milbank on Stockman & the evolution of the GOP. ...
... Maybe you thought Ed Meese was dead. He isn't. Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: "Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a prominent emeritus official at the Heritage Foundation, became the latest conservative to warn that President Obama could risk impeachment if he takes executive action on reducing gun violence in an interview Monday night." ...
... Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post targets Harry Reid. We'll have to do so, too:
** Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: "After fierce lobbying by political leaders in states across the Northeast, the House of Representatives on Tuesday night approved a long-awaited $50.7 billion emergency bill to provide help to victims of Hurricane Sandy. The aid package passed 241 to 180, with 49 Republicans joining 192 Democrats. The Senate is expected to pass the measure, and President Obama has expressed support for it.... Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is part of the chamber's leadership, said he would urge the Senate to approve the House bill even though he believed it fell short of what the Senate approved last year." ...
... CW: once again, Boehner has had to rely on Democrats to get a bill through the House. If the pressure to pass this bill had not come from within his own party, I would say he was learning.
Not Your Father's GOP. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "In a shift over a half-century, the [Republican] party base has been transplanted from the industrial Northeast and urban centers to become rooted in the South and West, in towns and rural areas. In turn, Republicans are electing more populist, antitax and antigovernment conservatives who are less supportive -- and even suspicious -- of appeals from big business.... Big business is so fearful of economic peril if Congress does not allow the government to keep borrowing ... that it is nearly united in skepticism of, or outright opposition to, House Republicans' demand that Mr. Obama first agree to equal spending cuts in benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid."
Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "When Congress struck a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, it also dealt a quiet blow to President Obama's health overhaul: The new law killed a multibillion-dollar program meant to boost health insurance competition by funding nonprofit health plans. The decision to end funding for the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans has left as many as 40 start-ups vying for federal dollars in limbo.... The Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan, or CO-OP, program was aimed at spending as much as $6 billion to help launch nonprofit health insurance carriers.... The fiscal cliff deal cuts nearly all of the program's unobligated funds, about $1 billion, leaving only a small portion of money to administer the CO-OP loans already granted."
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) writes an op-ed in the Bowling Green (Kentucky) Daily News defending his fiscal cliff deal. CW: Of course he's unintentionally hilarious: his argument boils down to this -- "Since most Kentuckians don't make a lot of money, very few of you will get hit with higher taxes." That's selfless Mitch, always looking out for his constituents even as he himself suffers the burdens of wealth. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.
Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: Marco Rubio's immigration plan -- which like his modified Dream Act, is still all talk -- is remarkably similar to what President Obama suggested in 2011 and what Senate Democrats are working on now.
Obama 2.0. Allison Sherry of the Denver Post: "Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will step down from his cabinet position in the Obama administration and return to Colorado to spend time with his family, his office has confirmed to The Denver Post. Salazar is expected to broadly announce his departure Wednesday. He has told President Barack Obama that he intends to leave his job by the end of March."
Elisabeth Rosenthal of the New York Times: "The tiny black particles released into the atmosphere by burning fuels are far more powerful agents of global warming than had previously been estimated, some of the world's most prominent atmospheric scientists reported in a study issued on Tuesday. These particles, which are known as black carbon and are the major component of soot, are the second most important contributor to global warming, behind only carbon dioxide...."
Charles Pierce on Aaron Swartz & an informed public & democracy & stuff. He begins, "The Boston Globe went long this morning on the death by suicide of Aaron Swartz -- most of which, ironically, is behind the newspaper's paywall...." ...
... Clive Crook of the Atlantic: "Juries have already been substantially dispensed with in this country. (By substantially, I mean in 97 percent of cases.) If prosecutors are not only going to rule on guilt unilaterally but also, in effect, pass sentence as well, one wonders why we can't also dispense with judges. In recent years, as the Wall Street Journal has documented in a disturbing series of articles, Congress has enabled prosecutorial intimidation by criminalizing ever more conduct, passing laws that provide for or require extreme sentences, and reducing the burden of proof (through expanded application of 'strict liability', where lack of criminal intent is no defense)." CW: Crook suggests that we now live in a country where it's better to be the victim of a crime than to be accused of a crime. "Is this justice system actually on my side? I'm by no means sure -- an astounding state of affairs," he writes.
David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A White House spokesman on Tuesday condemned anti-Semitic comments made by President Mohamed Morsi before he took office, calling on him to 'make clear this kind of rhetoric is not acceptable or productive in a democratic Egypt.; ... Asked about Mr. Morsi's anti-Semitic statements during a briefing at the White House, Jay Carney, the press secretary, said, 'We have raised our concerns over these remarks with the government of Egypt.'"
Emma Dumain of Roll Call: "... a campaign by the D.C. Council and local activists to get President Barack Obama to adopt the city's standard license plates with the 'Taxation Without Representation' motto has succeeded. On the heels of a WhiteHouse.gov petition, a council resolution and a White House meeting Friday, all presidential vehicles will be fitted with the new plates this coming weekend.... The slogan ... calls attention to the city's lack of voting rights in Congress. When the plates were created in 2000, President Bill Clinton adopted them..., but when President George W. Bush took over, he removed them. Obama followed Bush's example and stayed silent on the issue, until now."
Meet Your Congressman! Alex Pareene: Ted Yoho (real name) (RTP-Fla.) "is a bog-standard talk radio conservative, only instead of one of those with years of experience navigating the House of Representatives, like his predecessor, he is one who believes that he will shake things up by constantly repeating clichés about being an outsider."
The White House Is Getting Sick of Answering to You the People. Macon Phillips of the White House: "Starting today [Tuesday, Jan. 15], as we move into a second term, petitions [to the White House via the We the People Webpage] must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration. This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist."
Local News
Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) recently rolled out a plan to replace his state's personal income and corporate taxes with an increased sales tax. Such a move would shift taxes from the rich to the poor, who are disproportionately hit by the sales tax. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Jindal's plan will raise taxes on the bottom 80 percent of Louisianians, while cutting them for the richest 1 percent."
Right Wing World
Eric Lach of TPM: "A group of self-appointed 'patriots' are moving forward with an idea for a planned community of several thousand families of 'patriotic Americans' in Idaho, a project named The Citadel, envisioned as a 'martial endeavor designed to protect Residents in times of peril (natural or man-made).'" Thanks to contributor Lisa for the link.
Dibs on one of those houses between the arms factory & the firearms museum. Art by the Citadel, via TPM.... CW: In case -- like me -- you are contemplating a move to this particular fortress, the organizers warn that "Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles." They are not entirely unrealistic. ...
... Update: I can see already we are going to have fun modifying the Citadel's working plans.
News Ledes
New York Times: "The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it was grounding all Boeing 787s operated by United States carriers until it can determine what caused a new type of battery to catch fire on two planes in nine days."
New York Times: "The French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali escalated into a potentially much broader North African conflict on Wednesday when, in retribution, armed attackers in unmarked trucks seized an internationally managed natural gas field in neighboring Algeria and took at least 20 foreign hostages, including Americans."
New York Times: "The American military has suspended the transfer of detainees to some Afghan prisons out of concern over continuing human rights abuses and torture, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday in response to questions about the subject."
Washington Post: "The Obama administration is considering significant military backing for France's drive against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali, but its support for a major ally could test U.S. legal boundaries and stretch counterterrorism resources in a murky new conflict. The United States is already providing surveillance and other intelligence help to France and may soon offer military support such as transport or refueling planes, according to U.S. officials, who stressed that any assistance would stop short of sending American combat forces to the volatile West African nation." ...
... Al Jazeera: "French troops are heading north in Mali towards rebel-occupied territory at the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat 'within hours'. Nigeria is leading the African intervention in the country, with the deployment of about 200 soldiers as foreign governments invest heavily in the country to prevent it from falling into rebel hands. Edouard Guillaud, France's military chief of staff, said that the French ground operations began overnight."
Al Jazeera: "Two guards and five fighters have been killed in a suicide attack on the national headquarters of Afghanistan spy agency [in Kabul], officials said. 'There were five attackers involved. The first detonated a car bomb at the gate, the other four were shot dead by police and NDS guards as they approached,' [an official]... said, adding that about 30 civilians were wounded in Wednesday's attack."
AP: "A suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of a major Kurdish party in northern Iraq early Wednesday, the deadliest in a wave of morning attacks that killed at least 31 people across the country. The violence comes amid rising tensions among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups that threaten to plunge the country back into chaos...."
New York Times: "Japan's two largest airlines said Wednesday they would ground their fleets of Boeing's new 787 aircraft, the Dreamliner, after one operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan."
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Reader Comments (22)
But wait!!! They've got the wall, and they've got the farmers market.
Where are the farms? Where's the town dump? The sewage plant?
(etc). Are they going to eat hot lead?
Citadel: Amazing what one gets by giving morons crayons and graph paper... but where are the unicorn stables?
Two citadel thoughts:
Even in the unlikely event the Constant Weader and her admirers don't choose to live within the fortress walls, I'd wager the citadel as planned is not nearly large enough to accommodate all who should.
And...is it possible that enough of those who would not find life within those hallowed walls compatible with their urges and beliefs, let alone on a feeling plane simply copacetic, might find within their pocketbooks contributions sufficient to building a further and higher wall to keep the self-exiles in?
I would happily begin the drive with a small pledge.
Sweet
Let the crazy people build their own asylum. No cost to tax payers.
Sorry folks, but y'all can't hide behind walls; the world wont go away.
Maybe y'all can build your citadel next to Glenn Beck's latest ayn rand-stye community, and y'all can lob verbal hand grenades at each other, but the rest of us are going to have to soldier on.
I'm assuming all that green space around the Arms Factory is for the shooting ranges, because otherwise I don't see where they'll be able to test out their newly fabricated bazookas and hand grenades. And seeing the importance of guns in the Citadel, don't you think they could've bought up another acre for hunting their deers, rabbits and squirrels? Their strong morals would surely prohibit them from having to venture out into Libural America just to exercise their 2nd amendment rights. Or maybe they'll just truck 'em in twice a week before dawn and dump them out on 'John Parker Green' and then its no-weapons-barred action until the carnage is complete. If a civilian gets hit in the crossfire? Well they'll go to Heaven as martyrs of Freedom.
Looks like this citadel is based on the 1973 movie "Soylent Green"
starring Charlaton Heston----no farms needed---no garbage dump
needed---no cemetery needed---no waste treatment plant needed.
Problem solved. (Glad I've had breakfast allready!)
Re: The so-so wall of citadel; I want a moat. A moat for my boat. And a drawbridge. A drawbridge that goes,"cranky, cranky, crank" as it's lowered or raised. And a dwarf to operate it. "Raise the drawbridge, here comes JJG in his boat in the moat!" Cranky, cranky, cranky; "Lower the drawbridge, there goes JJG in his boat in the moat!" Cranky, cranky, cranky. Boy, that dwarf's cranky.
And flags; flags everywhere. A flag store on every corner.
A rabbit; one very tough rabbit, a rabbit who'll tear your throat out.
No men in tights and cod pieces; that would just be weird.
Does the Citadel have a hospital? Or, perhaps, their guns will protect them from all the ills of society created by those socialist liberals in The Enlightened States of America.
Last night watched Frontline's program on Obama's first term.By the time it was half way through I felt as exhausted as he looked. Here we saw once again this young man full of hope that he could change our country, yet right off the bat he faces the economic crisis. Again I was amazed at the depiction of the night of his inauguration in which a meeting was taking place at a Washington pub: the cabal of all the Young Guns plus a few old Bushmasters like Gingrich and Kyle plotting over their martinis and old-fashions how to counteract the loss of their party and coming up with the scheme of denouncing anything and everything Obama would put on the table––the old Groucho "whatever it is I'm against it." We are reminded at how right from the start Obama really believing he could work with these clowns put himself on the chopping block. We saw him giving in to Timmy on how to handle all those bankers who paraded up to the White House anticipating harsh treatment and some regulations but just got a slap on the wrist and came out smiling like Cheshire cats––they beat the odds once again. As the years go by and the frustrations mount I felt the urge he must have felt fleetingly––"fuck this! I'll just try to get through this term and hand it over to whoever is willing to take it on." But of course he doesn't. So now we see him throughly disgusted at the politics of all those nice guys on the other side who he should be, according to Dowd and others, inviting over for tea and sympathy or something similar. The gloves are off and bare knuckles are front and center on the podium. And I for one am rooting for a president that has at last had enough poo flung his way and should be shoveling it back in big doses.
When I watched the "You Lie" cry––the first ever in that context––I could see it was a harbinger for what has followed. In this case one swallow did make a summer.
Rachel Maddow made an especially disturbing and lengthy report last night. Several states, she mentioned WI, MI, PA, FL, OH, VA to name some, are using their Republican gerrymandered legislature to contemplate apportioning electoral votes in the next Presidential election. Even though Obama won the popular vote by 5M, he would have lost the electoral college by using this method in the "battle ground" states. Reince Priebus supports this notion, surprise, surprise. Contests at state levels are extremely critical for 2014. Hopefully, the constitutions of these states prohibit such a change without a statewide vote. There are several articles addressing the issue in various states, as links from last night's story, beginning with the GOP "Redmap" memo which was the GOP plan for control thru gerrymandering (which worked).
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/15/16535348-links-for-the-115-trms
Ed Meese: a name that will live in infamy.
I didn’t, in fact, know that he wasn’t dead. I had, I realized, when reading that name dripping with sludge and sleaze, successfully retired Ed Meese and his nefarious deeds to the line of broken filing cabinets at the back of my mind. You know, that poorly lit, dingy place where you warehouse things you’d rather not think about all that often like car accidents, misfortunes befalling friends and loved ones, and assholes like Ed Meese.
So Meese is back on his high ethical horse wagging his greasy finger at the president? Get in line scumbag.
Let’s review at least a few reasons why no one should pay the slightest bit of attention to this unscrupulous buffoon. In the most corrupt administration of the 20th century over 130 Reagan administration officials who were indicted, convicted, or under investigation, a Hall of Shame that includes frauds, mountebanks, cheats, and outright traitors such as Elliot Abrams, Ollie North, Michael Deaver, Robert MacFarlane, James Watt, and Richard Secord, the name Ed Meese stands ankles and toes below even the worst of this lot.
Why?
Let’s see: influence peddling, offering federal jobs for a price, complicit in destroying evidence requested by a congressional investigation, suborning perjury, back door deals, cronyism, and the infamous Wedtech scandal, a defense contractor scheme Meese tried to use to pad his own pockets. The guys working with Meese setting up all the illegal activities at Wedtech were indicted by Rudy Giuliani because the stuff Meese was into was so outrageously illegal and obvious that not even Republicans could turn a blind eye to it anymore.
But he had a hole card. He was Ronald Reagan’s buddy.
That was, by the way, his one and only requirement for getting to be Attorney General in the first place. But because his past was littered with so many shady deals and slimy maneuvers, it took a senate panel two long days of questioning to come to the conclusion that he could be Attorney General after all because up til then no one had been able to get enough on him to indict his ass.
Swell recommendation for the highest law official in the land. But in Reagan's World, that was enough.
It makes me sick when I hear all the wingnuts sing hossanahs in praise of Reagan whose administration looked like a line-up of killers and crooks from Dick Tracy comic strips: Flattop Jones, Pruneface, 3-D Magee, Big Boy Caprice. And Ed Meese was the worst snake in the shithole.
He spent much of his three years as Attorney General testifying on his own behalf in hearing after hearing into his questionable and unethical dealings. During that same period, he spent the rest of the time telling everyone else that they needed to clean up their acts, presenting himself as a Protector of Morals. A little bit like a drug addled Elvis asking Nixon if he could get a federal agent's badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Shit, Elvis knew most of them anyway.
When he finally resigned under a cloud, Meese trumpeted the results of a 400 page investigation into his activities, an “insufficient evidence to throw his ass in jail” finding, as proof of his high moral standing.
No wonder the Heritage Foundation hired him. He never actually did jail time. Hey, it was good enough for Reagan!
But now he wants, once more, for everyone to pay no attention to his past and his own ignorance of things like law and ethics and agree with him that this blah president should be impeached if he attempts to control the flow of assault weapons in this country.
Just despicable.
When he actually IS dead, his obit should say: Ed Meese, former Atty. General in the most scandal ridden, corrupt administration in US history. Insufficient evidence to indict, but often reminded everyone else of their duty to heed the Ten Commandments.
Oh, and one other thing. Maybe one other reason for Meese’s antipathy toward the president can be found in a speech he gave in 1986 in which he ripped the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the Supreme Court’s upholding of that ruling again in the 1980s, saying that the president and congress needed to ignore the Supreme Court and take down Brown on their own.
Like I said, despicable.
Any woman deciding to live in the Citadel or Beck's Gulch should beware. There may be no laws against testing out that "legitimate rape" idea. In fact, it may be a requirement. Run the "test" and if the woman becomes pregnant, she must be a slut and will be denied admittance to live among the noble and moral chevaliers of the Citadel.
Hey, just a thought about this bonkers Citadel plan. I see that the big brains who planned this place want it to serve also as a stronghold to protect decent wingnuts from attack.
It looks more than a bit like a walled medieval castle community. Hmmm...why did such places lose their effectiveness as bastions against outside invaders?
Oh wait, I know. Smart invaders used things like trebuchets, battering rams, and other siege warfare instruments, and oh yeah, don't forget cannons.
But none of those things would be necessary these days. Today we have these things called aeroplanes. Do these morons really believe that anyone wanting to harm them will show up dressed in leather tunics waving maces and carrying lances?
Pass out the pitchforks!!
Ignoramuses R Us.
Dowd's columns are a public airing of her neurosis and are mostly a waste of paper. However, Pierce's comments are priceless. In today's column: "And LBJ? A schmoozer? Not until your pecker was firmly in his pocket." 'nuff said.
re citidel:
No need for a new community.... let's give them The Dry Tortugas National Park. It's off the coast, has high walls AND it has a MOAT!
One can only get there by boat or plane.(How wonderful, isolation for the crazies.)
Cannons, they even have cannons. Rooms ready for all rushing to join.
Beautiful arches, a common green, sea air. This has possibilities.
http://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=688&bih=586&q=fortress+on+the+dry+tortugas&oq=fortress+on+the+dry+tortugas&gs_l=img.12...3120.13833.0.17840.28.10.0.18.18.0.92.864.10.10.0...0.0...1ac.1.oJ2sS_60e9E
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Tortugas_National_Park
2 sites: google images and wiki
Maybe we can send Lepage there.
mae finch
Thanks for drawing attention to Mitch McConnell's op-ed in the Bowling Green paper. You correctly point out that he's saved so many from tax increases precisely because the average income in Kentucky is so low. You neglected to mention that, in fact, it is these lower-income folk that are now suffering the most from the expiration of payroll taxes, something the Republican caucus insisted on. It's clear whose back McConnell's got.
The NRA criticism of the "elitist" POTUS sort of misses the scale of the protection given to his daughters. The Secret Service provides Personal Protective service to them. The PP Detail focuses on security for the two girls, not their whole school and all their classmates (although they do that collaterally, I'd guess). So to say that the "elitist" President cares for his own, but not yours, because he has not provided everybody armed school guards, is w-a-a-a-y understating the discrepancy. We should provide PPDs to each kid, not just a few security guards, to level the field. Or just take away the Obama girls' PPDs, because they're just like the rest of us.
These people (NRA ad writers) are truly despicable and the longer this goes on, the more people will see that.
Thank God the NRA seems to have a natural genius for making themselves appear like the purblind, idiotic fanatics they actually are. The video attacking Obama for accepting (not initiating) Secret Service protection for his daughters is a superb example of this talent in action.
Rushbo said the other day re: Obama's Executive Orders: "Who's going to stop him?" I'm really worried about Monday. Some crazed listener may decide he or she will stop him. The Secret Service had better be on extra high alert.
Rush seems to just skirt sedition in hs broadcasts.
Barbarossa,
Rush and his ilk don't just skirt sedition, they foment it. When someone like Limbaugh asks, of his unhinged, off the chain listeners, who will stop him (the president), it's no different than the English king Henry II who asked if there was no one who could rid him of "...this turbulent priest", meaning the one man in the kingdom who could put a cork in Henry's sleazy opportunism.
Shortly thereafter, Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who decried many of the illegal actions taken by the king, was murdered by Henry's ball-licking sycophants.
The NRA, I have no doubt, has every expectation and hope that some lunatic of their number will rid them of this pest (President Obama) who is trying to limit their ability to allow sick murderers to plant innocent children in the ground.
Because the NRA is just that kind of organization.
"Fox hires Dennis Kucinich as analyst."
Fox will be a good fit for Kucinich. He's always had that tinfoil hat in his briefcase.