;)
The Commentariat -- Feb. 8, 2013
Mark Mazetti & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "In a tumultuous start to the confirmation hearing for John O. Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday, protesters briefly disrupted his testimony and Mr. Brennan came under unexpectedly intense questioning from both Democrats and Republicans about drone strikes, leaks of classified information and his knowledge of the agency's former interrogation program." ...
... Greg Miller has the Washington Post report: "A Senate hearing on the nomination of John O. Brennan to serve as CIA director exposed deep skepticism of key aspects of the Obama administration's approach to fighting terrorism, including its unprecedented reliance on targeted killing and the secrecy it maintains around the exercise of that lethal power." ...
... Here's the "NBC Nightly News" report on the Brennan hearing:
... C-SPAN has video of the full public hearing here. ...
... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "... five key questions Brennan avoided [answering] throughout the course of the hearing: [1.] Did torture lead to the capture of Osama bin Laden? ... [2.] Did torture work? ... [3.] Will Brennan reduce the CIA's paramilitary role? ... [4.] Is waterboarding torture? ... [5.] Do American citizens have a right to know when they might be killed on suspicion of terrorism?" ...
... Marcy Wheeler: John Brennan, "who can't (or refuses to) say whether waterboarding is torture because he is not a lawyer, is entrusted every Tuesday to make far more difficult legal decisions, both on the subjective feasible and imminent questions, but also on specific international laws. In other words, according to the guy who has been acting as judge and jury for the last four years, the guy who has been acting as judge and jury is completely incompetent to act as judge and jury."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "President Obama vowed Thursday to confront Republicans over the issue of closing tax loopholes, saying that he would relish a debate with those who insist that Congress has done all it should to get more tax revenue from wealthy individuals and corporations." ...
... Here are the President's remarks to House Democrats:
... Digby on sequester negotiations: "The President has already screwed the pooch on this with his statement that the Fiscal Cliff deal he offered is still on the table so there's really no point in pretending that the Democrats won't be offering up more cuts. Still, it could be useful if they at least tried to bluff a little bit before caving.... (Of course, that means that Cokie and Ruth Marcus might not give them plaudits for being grown-ups and that would be the worst thing that could possibly happen.) ... It's also a long term catastrophic error on the part of the Democrats to enthusiastically take credit for deficit reduction at exactly the wrong moment. They are cementing conservative economic ideology at their own expense. It's political malpractice.... It will be the 'grown-ups' who [are to blame for] fully [buying in[to] ... the economic ideology that destroyed the middle class." ...
... Paul Krugman: "While it's true that we will eventually need some combination of revenue increases and spending cuts to rein in the growth of U.S. government debt, now is very much not the time to act. Given the state we're in, it would be irresponsible and destructive not to kick that can down the road."
Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The nation's Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees." CW: In a statement, the bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court." The bishops also said that until HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joins a convent & pledges her fealty to Rome, they will fight her every effort to accommodate their anti-woman agenda. (Okay, maybe I took liberties here.) ...
... NEW. Charles Pierce pens a note to the President re: the Clan of the Red Beanie: "You are attempting to compromise with people who simply do not want anyone to have access to birth control. You are attempting to compromise with people who do not accept your right to demand anything of them in return. It is time to be a secular political leader again and not give a damn."
Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "After decades of friction over immigration, the nation's labor unions and the leading business association, the Chamber of Commerce, have formed an unusual alliance that is pushing hard to revamp American immigration laws. These oft-feuding groups ... are also nearing common ground on a critical issue -- the number of guest workers allowed into the country -- that has deeply divided business and labor for years and helped to sink President George W. Bush's push for an immigration overhaul in 2007."
Shabnam Bashiri in Salon: "The housing recovery is largely a myth, as increases in home sale prices are the result of Wall Street firms buying up foreclosed homes & renting them out, sometimes to the former owners upon whom the banks have foreclosed. "After creating a massive bubble in home prices that eventually burst and caused our economy to go into a tailspin, these guys have decided to come back for more, and figured out a way to profit off their destruction -- by turning foreclosed homes into rentals and securitizing the rental income.... Many are claiming this is a 'private sector solution.'" Bashiri provides an example. CW: if she's right (and she's an expert), this is a further -- & horrendous -- instance of how Wall Street & Washington are collaborating to turn back the clock to the 19th century, in this case to a time when homeownership in the U.S. was quite low.
Alan Fram of the AP: "A bipartisan quartet of senators, including two National Rifle Association members and two with 'F' ratings from the potent firearms lobby, are quietly trying to find a compromise on expanding the requirement for gun-sale background checks.... The private discussions involve liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is the No. 3 Senate Democratic leader; West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, an NRA member and one of the chamber's more moderate Democrats; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., another NRA member and one of the more conservative lawmakers in Congress; and moderate GOP Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois."
Kimberly Kindy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Shoddy practices and unsanitary conditions at three large-scale specialty pharmacies have been tied to deaths and illnesses over the past decade, revealing that the serious safety lapses at a Massachusetts pharmacy linked to last fall's deadly meningitis outbreak were not an isolated occurrence.... A Washington Post analysis found that state and federal authorities did little to systematically inspect and correct hazards posed by specialty pharmacies, which custom-mix medications for individual patients, hospitals and clinics. In the lightly regulated industry, pharmacies were rarely punished even when their mistakes had lethal consequences."
Troubles in Right Wing World
According to my two favoritest Politico reporters, Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen, the GOP is aiming to "marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots." ...
... But, inconveniently enough, Jon Chait of New York points out that "In order to purge a party of crankish and bigoted sentiments, you would need to identify what those sentiments are. Climate-change denial? Opposition to gay marriage? 'Self-deportation'? Railing against food stamps? Supply-side economics?" ...
... While we're thinking about that brilliant plan, along comes ...
(Just a reminder here that the first & only woman ever to be Speaker of the House & House Minority Leader has never, ever been on the cover of Time magazine.) That's convenient. Or maybe not. Steve Benen takes a tally (all the links that follow are Benen's: "Maybe now would be a good time to note the blurred line between GOP 'cranks, haters and bigots' and the rest of the party? Let's use Rubio, the Republican 'savior,' as an example. Rubio doesn't accept climate science, thinks the age of the planet is a theological question, and opposes marriage equality. Remember the Blunt Amendment that would have empowered employers to deny birth-control coverage to their employers? It was originally known as the 'Blunt-Rubio Amendment.' Rubio is part of a shrinking fringe that opposes the Violence Against Women Act, embraces strange conspiracy theories involving gun control, and thinks George W. Bush was a 'fantastic' president. Rubio tells teleprompter jokes while reading from teleprompters, has been caught lying about the basics of Republican budget policy, has suggested TARP recipients shouldn't have to repay bailout money, and in 2011, argued programs like Medicare and Social Security have 'actually weakened us as a people.' ... What happens when the party realizes it doesn't have a moderate wing and its cranks and rising stars believe in roughly the same far-right ideology?" ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress posts 8 reasons Rubio is not the Republican savior: "1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling.... 2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment.... 3. Signed the Norquist pledge.... 4. Backed Florida's voter purge.... 5. Doesn't believe in climate change.... 6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women.... 7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees.... 8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group." ...
... Ed Kilgore has more. "So if Rubio has been on the crazy fringe of his party on fiscal policy [he has], why exactly are we supposed to believe he's somehow the voice and face of a middle-class-friendly GOP? He was front-and-center late last summer in defending the Republican platform’s support for a flat ban on abortions even in cases of rape and incest. So why is he 'saner' than Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock? ... [Because] immigration is the only issue on which Republicans as a whole are actually considering a 'shift' in their policies (though not so much their ideology). Rubio is the front-man for that effort...." ...
... The Time portrait of Rubio, by Michael Grunwald, is pretty sympathetic and just barely hints at Rubio's policies on anything outside immigration. ...
... Don't worry too much about Right Wing World, though. Orwellian Logic still applies. Jon Chait of New York: "Rubio has managed to get conservatives to think of cooperating with Obama on immigration reform as a kind of triumph over Obama. Never mind that Obama has favored comprehensive reform all along, and Rubio opposed it until the last few weeks. The new partisan narrative presents Obama as a foe of immigration reform and Rubio as its long-standing champion.... So then finally, Rubio will be standing with his foot atop Obama's throat, having bested him by forcing him to sign a bill fulfilling one of his longtime legislative priorities. And then 2016!"
Matt Gertz of Media Matters: Fox "News" may have purged two of its more high-profile crazy people -- Sarah Palin & Dick Morris -- but it still has its share of loons, including birther Eric Bolling & truther Andrew Napolitano.
** Melissa Henneberger of the Washington Post: "For more than 30 years, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald have been studying the unconscious biases that take root in our brains, coloring everything from hiring decisions to how doctors mete out medical care and judges pass sentence. If you don't think you harbor any such mental stowaways, tugging you in favor of white over black, straight over gay, or male over female ... then log onto Harvard's Project Implicit and prepare to be disappointed in someone you never knew held such appalling views: you."
Local News
Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: "North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and has been rated the worst state in the country for women, but the State Senate passed two bills on Thursday will make it even more difficult for women in the state to access abortion care. [The state senate] passed a Personhood Constitutional Amendment initiative on Thursday that would amend the state's constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections." ...
Melissa Anders of M Live: Michigan "House Speaker Jase Bolger said the Michigan House will not approve legislation that mandates transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion. Rep. Joel Johnson, R-Clare, introduced a bill this week that would require an ultrasound at least two hours before an abortion is performed using the 'most technologically advanced ultrasound equipment available at that location.' Many have interpreted the bill to mean that it would require the controversial and more invasive transvaginal ultrasound, but Johnson said that's not his intent and that he's 'very open' to amending the bill to clarify that."
Firedoglake, re: the shooting in Torrance, California of newspaper carriers: "... the police ... have already shown themselves to be reckless cowards. Two Asian women delivering newspapers were shot by Torrance undercover Los Angeles police this morning simply because they were in a Nissan truck similar to that [Christopher] Dorner, [a suspected police murderer,] may have been driving.... Dorner is a 6'4″ black male. There's no way the cops could have made any sort of visual identification of the people in this truck and mistaken either of them for Dorner. And wouldn't a second person in the truck, who might have been a hostage, preclude them from using deadly force? Shouldn't the fact that the license plate was not Dorner's have kept them from emptying their guns into the back window of this truck? Or maybe the fact that the truck was the wrong color and model? Somehow, the two women escaped death; one was shot in the back twice and is expected to recover and the other was shot in the hand was injured by broken glass. A second shooting, which involved Torrance police firing at a vehicle which also turned out not to be Dorner's, miraculously did not cause any injuries." CW: maybe the Torrance police are worse shots than the LAPD.
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "With snow piling up in Big Bear, authorities continued searching cabins deep in the forest but have turned up no leads on ex-cop and suspected killer Christopher Jordan Dorner, police said Friday afternoon."
UPI: "Los Angeles County plans to fire seven sheriff's deputies for membership in a secret group called the Jump Out Boys, officials said. The clique's members allegedly have tattoos showing skulls with skeletal hands holding revolvers, the Los Angeles Times reported. Smoke on the tattoo indicates a deputy has been involved in a shooting."
New York Times: "Alice Boland, 28, who was charged in 2005 with threatening to assassinate President George W. Bush and members of Congress..., is again charged with plotting a violent attack. On Monday, after pacing in front of the school gates [of Ashley Hall, a private girls school in Charleston, South Carolina] during car pool and visibly swinging a gun, she tried to shoot two faculty members," but she didn't know how to unlock the gun. "She appeared to have bought the gun legally...."
New York Times: "The leader of a dissident Amish sect, [Samuel Mullet, Sr.,] was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison for a series of bizarre beard- and hair-cutting attacks on other Ohio Amish that drew national attention.
Shoot First, Ask Questions Later. Los Angeles Times: "Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers...."
Guardian: "An investigation has been launched [by the FBI???] into how a hacker managed to access the email accounts of the former US president George HW Bush and members of his family. A number of Bush family photographs and personal emails were posted online by the hacker, who goes by the name of Guccifer. According to the Smoking Gun website, the emails -- which were sent between 2009 and 2012 -- contain details about the state of the former president's health as well as the home addresses, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of dozens of members of the Bush family." The Smoking Gun story is here. ...
... Reuters Update: "The Secret Service is investigating the hacking of email accounts belonging to members of the Bush family that divulged correspondence, addresses [and] phone numbers...."
New York Times: "Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's largest makers of computers and other electronics, is imposing new limits on the employment of students and temporary agency workers at factories across China. The move, following recent efforts by Apple to increase scrutiny of student workers, reflects a significant shift in how electronics companies view problematic labor practices in China."
Guardian: "European leaders were inching towards a deal in the early hours of Friday morning that would see the first cut in the EU's budget in its 56-year history. [British PM] David Cameron, who had demanded a freeze in real terms in the near-€1tn budget, was planning to claim victory after the European council president proposed a €34.4bn cut over the next seven years." ...
... New York Times Update: "After a failed attempt to set spending targets at a summit meeting in November and in a 24-hour marathon of talks this week, European leaders finally agreed late Friday to a common budget for the next seven years."
Al Jazeera: "Tens of thousands chanted anti-Ennahda slogans in the streets of Tunisia's capital for the burial procession of a slain opposition leader [Shokri Belaid] whose murder plunged the country into a political crisis and fresh post-revolution violence." CW: Ennahda is Tunisia's ruling party. With video.
Reuters: "Turkey has spent more than $600 million sheltering refugees from the almost two-year-old conflict in neighboring Syria, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Friday.... The United Nations said on Friday that refugee numbers have spiked, with around 5,000 people fleeing each day, 2,000 more a day than last year's figures."
Reuters: "Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead nine health workers who were administering polio vaccinations in two separate attacks in Nigeria's main northern city of Kano on Friday, police said. No one claimed responsibility but Islamist militant group Boko Haram - a sect which has condemned the use of Western medicine - has been blamed for carrying out a spate of assaults on security forces in the city in recent weeks."
AP: "The former American ambassador to Mali says France paid $17 million in ransoms to free French hostages and that the money ended up in the hands of the same al-Qaida militants the country is fighting now. In an interview that aired Friday on iTele, Vicki Huddleston said the money allowed al-Qaida's North Africa branch to flourish in Mali. Claude Gueant, who was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff at the time, on Friday denied that France had ever paid a ransom and said intermediaries had been negotiating to free the hostages."
AP: "Lawyers for Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, say that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has agreed to pay her for repeatedly intercepting her voicemail messages. The Duchess of York was one of a slew of phone hacking victims who settled on Friday with News Corp. over its campaign of illegal espionage by its British newspapers."
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Reader Comments (24)
Re: the Brennan hearings. Kinda liked Charlie Pierce's take:
"The man whom the administration has put up to head the CIA would not say whether or not the president of the United States has the power to order the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen within the borders of the United States. (And a thousand heads on conspiracy websites explode.) And the hearing, remarkably, went on as though nothing untoward had happened."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz2KGpwLR4P
Don't know if I've shared this maundering before, Ken says apologetically, but it occurs to me that one of the signs of that trend we're riding toward the Great Collective I've mentioned before is the increasing willingness of our legal and judicial systems to grant Bill of Rights protection to institutions, often at the expense of individuals.
We are all aware of the Citizens United nonsense that provides corporations with the means to drown out the plaintive voices of mere human beings, but I see this battle over contraception as another example: an immensely wealthy and powerful religious institution similarly placed and protected, which demands the right exert its notion of what is right over wide swaths of people who do not share its particular brand of lunacy.
This tendency revealed itself in the SCOTUS (I believe it was) ruling that some time ago allowed faith-based anti-poverty programs to select their employees on sectarian grounds, all this in the name of "freedom of religion." Again here, freedom for the institution quashes freedom for the individual
If I'm bothered, Libertarians should be quaking, and when the (Ron) Paulists figure it out, I foresee another rupture (schism) in the Republican coalition. But that's the only good news.
@Ken Winkes: I believe the philosophy of governance you're referring to there is better known as "Corporations are people, my friend."
Our long history of favoring special interest groups over individual rights makes a mockery of the Bill of Rights & makes the "freedom" screams from the right all the more ridiculous because what they are actually demanding is not individual freedom but special group primacy: even the recent Court decision re: reading the Second Amendment as an "individual" right isn't really about individual rights: it's about catering to gun lobby. Somehow the First Amendment remains the "basis" for not taxing church property or church income. What about my individual "right" to equitable taxation? Too bad. I have to pay for the public services the churches receive, but they don't have to pay for mine. (If put to a vote, I expect mosques & maybe synagogues would be taxed but not the Jesus Is God megachurch scam.)
Marie
And I am amazed that this Church of redemption and resurrection by men in long robes whose sexual propensity appears to be an appetite for small boys has the effrontery to challenge the latest White House proposal re: contraception coverage. How anyone can take what the Church doles out seriously continues to baffle me. Where is their purchase? After all the scandals I would think they would have very little.
PD,
Ahh...you forgot that humility and love of neighbor, presumably to the point where you recognize that you don't have the right to force your rules down her throat, is not for those in the long robes, it's for the rubes.
For every St. Francis there are thousands of Pope Benedicts who don't give a rat(zinger)'s ass what you believe as long as do what you're told.
Even if you're not Catholic.
Ken,
One of the conundrums of our system is that one person's freedom can be another's tyranny. The multitude of competing claims in our society are recognized by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights but not often easily settled (the right to a fair trial balanced against, say, the freedom of the press) to everyone's satisfaction. And that is, as my old friend Isaiah Berlin might say, a systemic problem and one that requires not noxious nostrums but serious consideration by thoughtful minds.
But much of that is backburnered by the current vogue for, as you mention, supplanting the rights of individuals with the rights of corporations, the wealthy, and the connected. Some ARE more equal than others. And the fact that this sort of thinking is propelled by right-wing "intellectuals" who prostrate themselves, beat their breasts, and wave the flag whenever mention is made of the sainted Founders is particularly galling.
Some of those founders, notably Hamilton, Monroe, and Jay, conspicuously attended to the worries of the anti-federalists that an all powerful government would threaten individual liberty and freedoms (much as a monarchy might) by addressing these issues in their writing of the Federalist Papers, and by amending the original Constitution with the Bill of Rights, a document whose sole existence arose from exactly such concerns, that individual rights must be guarded against incursion by powerful forces (corporations? churches? banks?) who might seek to overwhelm citizens in pursuit of greater power, influence, and, of course, piles of cabbage, lucre, moolah, and shiny shekels.
So out of one side of their mouths we hear all about FREEEEDDDDOOOMMMM and the FOUNDERS and out the other "corporations are people, my friend" (doesn't that smarmy, condescending "my friend" just stick in your craw? What a fucking creep. Where are those cream pie throwing dudes when you really need them?).
So anyway, there's just gotta be a better word than "hypocrites". "Mendacious two-faced, scum-sucking dissimulators" comes close but I'm open to other possibilities.
Ooops. I see that I inserted Monroe in place of Madison.
Sorry Jimmy. Even worse, he wasn't even a Federalist! Sheesh.
Never be your own editor.
Marie and Akhilleus: Couldn't say it better, so won't try. Will just suggest how useful viewing most news items through the lens of liberty has become. Because our institutions, corporate, religious and governmental have become bigger and more powerful over time--set aside discussion of the reasons for this for now--all infringe on personal liberty and the range of possible choices on which any notion of personal liberty must be based.
The big choice we have to make is which set of institutions is most likely to treat us better, more fairly, as individual members of the Great Hive. Over which do we as individuals have the most control? I have my obvious biases. Private health insurance or a single payer government run program? The USPS or FEDEX or UPS? We're blindly taking our picks, most often by letting others choose for us, and I suspect we will live to regret them.
Akhilleus: Other possibilities––here a singular one: A demonic dunce with the hide of an ox and the sensitivity of an embalmer, but we could add some s's on since it applies to so many, doncha think?
What a coincidence that you and I should have the same old friend: Isaiah Berlin with whom I spent many a wintery afternoon with–- now retired on the lower shelf in my bookcase always ready in case I need some of his Foxy, Hedgehogging advice. And you are such a copy cat––Achilleus looks a lot like Archilochus, the BCE guy who came up with the aforementioned animal analogy. I think he also said corporations are NOT people, my friends or something to that effect as he adjusted his toga and bowed to the crowd.
PD,
Hopefully that was a full length toga and he didn't moon the crowd with that bow, or worse.
Berlin comes in handy in so many ways, I've found. I came to his work through one of those weird roundabouts that began with James Joyce and Giambattista Vico which led me to seek out an article and then a book on Vico by Berlin which led in turn to some of his writing on the Enlightenment (he was not a fan) and Romanticism (a fan), the history of ideas (historical inevitability: silly or nonsensical, you decide), and pluralism (good idea but difficult to manage; just ask Machiavelli).
A great companion in winter or summer. Along with Arichilochus of the loose toga.
@Akhilleus, et al.: no matter what form of government, it only works when almost everyone -- & certainly everyone in a position of power -- agrees to abide by the laws of that government, even if they seek to change those laws & even if they are willing to use nonviolent means to challenge those laws.
But we have a party -- the GOP -- that actively encourages not just civil disobedience but treason. Do Senators go out & tell people to take up arms against the government? Well, no. But they feed people's misunderstandings of the Second Amendment, they pretend that its purpose is to protect people against government overreach, some -- like Erick Erickson -- threaten to shoot Federal officials, & always, in every day & every way, they fulminate revolt by telling people that the current president is un-American & government is the problem. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, in Congress, they are the party of no, deciding to nullify -- disobey -- laws they don't like. They are damned proud of betraying their oath to uphold the Constitution & laws.
The way I see the Constitution is as a contract of sorts between the governors & the governed. But if the governors break the contract -- and that is what leaders of the Republican party are doing -- then our government is not much more stable & reliable than that of a banana republic. Here we're not just talking about individual bad actors -- the corrupt politician, the zealot for the gold standard. We're talking about a whole political party, with millions of backers, who don't believe our government is legitimate. That's a problem.
Marie
Just a quick thought about those trigger happy cops in Torrance.
Just imagine if Wayne (Six Gun) LaPierre's wet dream of 100s of millions of guns tied down old west style or carried and concealed by 100s of millions of Americans ever came true and we had another situation like the one in LA. If the cops, guys who are supposedly trained in gun safety and proper use, can't keep from shooting innocent civilians (remember those cops in NY a couple of months ago who drew down on some guy with a gun and shot up a bunch of bystanders?) what makes anyone think that Mr. Whipple, after he's through squeezing the Charmin is going to go all Dirty Harry and hit the right guy(s) with the first perfectly aimed shot? Never mind all the whackos who think that they ARE Dirty Harry? Or worse!
Fucking pandemonium.
First stop along the road to the modern GOP and their gun lobby masters. All aboard! Oh, yes Grannie, it's perfectly okay to bring your Glock on the train while sitting next to the kiddies.
Looks like insurance companies will now have to add "Paper Delivery Person" to their list of high risk jobs.
Seem to have lost a comment sent within the last hour but won't repeat it now.
Instead only ancillary on Berlin: tho' not the first encounter, he was one of the memorable supporting characters who made guest appearances in the marvelous biography of Kentucky's Ed Prichard, Jr., SHORT OF THE GLORY. I'd recommend it to any student of American politics, tho' I'm mindful I may overstate its worth because in it I also encountered an early version of one of my college professors and one of my wife's father's law partners. Made this hermit feel connected to players on a more national stage.
Question.
If the GOP gets rid of all the cranks, haters, and bigots, who will be left?
Ken, the Prichard book sounds like a good one. Have to put that on my Amazon wish list. The Roosevelt administrations were never short on drama and dramatic characters.
Holy Mother of God. I just read in the morning paper that the Congresscritter I helped get elected, Dr. Ami Bera ( mostly in opposition to the sitting Congresscritter) has joined a bipartisan group calling themselves "Problem Solvers" and wearing fucking orange buttons. One can only hope the button says "Ignore me, I'm stupid". Light on women ( one I think), there are 40 participants, who "for now are steering clear of hot button issues such as abortion..." DeJarais is a member as is Patrick Murphy. This cluster is the brainchild of McKinnon's "no labels" group.
What a colossal waste of time. The "hot button issues" are exactly what you need to be focusing on. Borrow a pair of big boy panties ( Alan Grayson or Bernie Sanders have extras) and seek the comfort of your mother's breast elsewhere.
I knew my guy wasn't a great candidate but I'd hoped he was not a devotee of the "I'm a physician therefore I can make the world reverse rotation."
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/07/5173733/congress-problem-solvers-say-its.html#storylink=misearch
@Ken Winkes. My system spammed you. I just de-spammed your earlier comment.
Also, here's a comment by @cowichan that got spammed a couple of days ago. I'll have to keep up better:
"What's up with Ohio's Kasich? Has he caught a progressive bug?
http://my.firedoglake.com/ohiogringo/2013/02/05/post-election-progressive-scorecard-update-kasich-9-obama-1/
"With respect to Sally Jewell. She's been CEO of REI. I don't think you can successfully run a company while being divorced from the corporate philosophy for which visit the REI website and click on stewardship or 'about REI'. To the best of my knowledge this is a Seattle based non-profit co-op with sincere environmentalist creds. Who better to know the enemy than a past employee?"
Cowichan
@Diane: sounds like Dr. Bera there also has no idea why the Senate hasn't passed a budget in several years.
Maybe you should send your yahoo Congresscritter this post from the conservative Economist so he would have a better understanding of what was going on in his mysterious new environs.
It also might interest that dope to know that cutting off Congress's salaries is unconstitutional. 27th Amendment: "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." Maybe you'll want to familiarize him with that, too. (BTW, even Darrell Issa knows that.) What a bozo!
Marie
P.S. I'm afraid you & I are not going to get our honorary orange buttons.
@JJG: Re: Vietnam (yesterday). Not all of us believed in "Kill Everything In Sight." As to the "unseen enemy," the North Vietnamese (NVA) and better trained Viet Cong (VC) were masters of field fortifications and camouflage so we often didn't know they were there until it was too late. The NVA wore uniforms, were well trained, tough, and well organized. My worst day in Vietnam was running into some NVA regulars in the mountains. There weren't any civilians around--just them and us. They killed five of my men, but to this day, I don't know if we got any of them. Nor were the NVA/VC particularly fussy about civilian casualties, especially during the Tet Offensive in 1968. My men were especially good with children and liked to play games with them. As I said in an earlier post,the American Revolution was far too complex to be reduced to a bumper sticker and the same applies to Vietnam. When someone tells you they were in Vietnam, ask them: When were you there? Where were you? What was your job? There were some who served a full tour and were never shot at.
Marie
I bow to the oracle. Thanks for the info which I used in the e-mail to him a few minutes ago. I was brief and to the point. I have been e-mailing Dr Bera quite regularly and have been polite to date. This was my closing paragraph...made me feel better at least.
Your foolish orange button is juvenile and non-productive. You are not in a sandbox playing with the other kids. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your personal charm and the strength of your belief in your own importance are not going to get things done in Washington. Please pursue the issues for which you were elected - jobs, protecting civil rights, voter rights, and most recently more stringent gun regulations just to name a few. Play with the other boys on your own time.
@Akhilleus Now there's a brilliant idea: let's buy Wayne LaPierre a Nissan pickup truck matching the vehicle the LA and Torrance police are looking for and send him into Torrance.
Calyban,
Great idea!
Then we can measure Wayne-o's theories and ability to handle weapons under duress.
I'm guessing the former are as fictional and bumbling as the latter.
Prick.
@Akhilleus & @Calyban: so, as I understand the Wayne LaPierre theory of gun safety, the Asian ladies' big mistake was not packing heat & not returning fire.
And this brings to mind another salient point: what was the idea of having someone ride shotgun if she was not, you know, going to shoot a gun? Silly ladies.
Marie
@Diane: Good show! sock it to him!
@ Barbarossa: After I finished Neil Sheehan's "A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam" some years ago I couldn't read anything else for weeks. That war will haunt us––and I imagine you especially––for as long as we keep it in memory. I marched against it in the sixties believing we would make a difference. Foolish fancy that.
Ak:
"Question.
"If the GOP gets rid of all the cranks, haters, and bigots, who will be left?"
The better question would be where will they go?