;)
The Commentariat -- March 13, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post: "The former members of Oklahoma University's disbanded Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter are considering a lawsuit against the school, according to statements from the fraternity's newly retained attorney, Stephen Jones.... Jones, who served as Timothy McVeigh's lead defense attorney during the Oklahoma City Bombing trial, told KFOR that the fraternity members objected to statements from the school's president that, they say, painted all of the fraternity members as racists and bigots." CW: Jones sure gets fine clients: a mass-murdering terrorist & frat-boy racists.
James Hohmann of Politico: "One-third of Republican insiders [as defined by Politico!] believe that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and his GOP colleagues -- including several potential presidential candidates -- crossed the line when they published an open letter to Iranian leaders warning about a possible nuclear deal." ...
... Dumbest Guy in Senate Says "Oops!" Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg: "The letter 47 Republicans sent earlier this week warning against a nuclear deal President Barack Obama is negotiating with Iran probably shouldn't have been addressed to the regime's leaders, said Senator Ron Johnson, who signed the letter." ...
... CW: A few days ago Philip Weiss of MondoWeiss speculated that neoconservative, invariably-wrong Bill Kristol likely had a hand in the drafting the Senate's 47 Percent letter. ...
... SO ... Tim Mak of the Daily Beast: "The letter, which was conceived of by freshman GOP Sen. Tom Cotton, was influenced in part by prominent national security hawk and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Kristol said he had no part in drafting or editing the letter, but did consult with the senator about it. 'I did discuss it with Tom as he was conceiving it and pondering whether and how to do it. I know he consulted with others as well with some government and foreign policy experience, as you'd expect,' Kristol told The Daily Beast." ...
... CW: These people sit together in little puddles of stupid. When they are not saying stupid things to each other, they are congratulating each other for the stupid things they say.
Barbie Nadeau of the Daily Beast: "Russian president Vladimir Putin appears to be back at the Kremlin after a mysterious disappearance that had people wondering if the Russian leader might be seriously ill or at risk of a coup. But a Swiss newspaper says the Russian playboy was just in Lugano for the birth of his lovechild. In an article titled Es ist ein Mädchen! or 'It's a Girl,' the paper Bilk claims that Putin and his alleged 32-year-old lover, Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, welcomed their daughter at the private Santa Anna di Sorgeno clinic in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino on the Italian border -- a favorite playground for wealthy Russians."
*****
CW: I am just waiting for some prominent Republican in a pique to shout, "I don't care about the facts." It would be the gaffe of gaffes, and it could happen. Because it's true of nearly every one of them.
** "We Have a President for a Reason." Historian Kathleen DuVal, in a New York Times op-ed, puts the Senate's 47 Percent in historical context. It turns out, not surprisingly, that attempts by early American individual elected officials to negotiate with foreign powers were both kooky & unsuccessful. "Having a point person for foreign relations was one of the main motives for jettisoning the Articles of Confederation in 1789.... Increasingly, Americans began to see alternative negotiating as treason." ...
... CW: Oh, the irony! The Senate's 47 Percent, in their pompous pose as Constitutional scholars & teachers, were in fact acting as perfect exemplars of what the sainted Founders wrote the Constitution to prevent. ...
... David Goldstein of McClatchy News: "The U.S. Senate Historian's Office has so far been unable to find another example in the chamber's history where one political party openly tried to deal with a foreign power against a presidential policy, as Republicans have attempted in their open letter to Iran this week." Thanks to Dave S. for the link. ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Something seems to be out of kilter in the political marketplace that yielded Tom Cotton.... The odds of having a chance encounter with rationality in today's Senate are vanishingly small." ...
... Quite a few editorial boards around the country are reacting to the Senate's 47 Percent. Here's the Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor: "If the open letter to the 'Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran' represents the path forward for U.S. foreign policy, chaos is the destination. It's simply stunning that [Kelly] Ayotte [N.H.] and 46 other senators can&'t see that -- or choose not to." ...
... Cotton Sheep. Steve Benen: "The fact that Cotton would continue ridiculous antics after winning the election shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. What matters, though, is the Republican embrace of this brand of political extremism.... After he created what was effectively an international incident, his fellow GOP lawmakers are 'suddenly flocking to him for counsel on foreign policy'? Two bumbling months into his term, Arkansas Republicans are gearing up for his 2020 presidential campaign? This really isn't healthy." ...
... Former Bushie Michael Gerson: "This was a foreign policy maneuver, in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority's capacity to govern.... Congress simply has no business conducting foreign policy with a foreign government, especially an adversarial one." CW: You can ignore about half of Gerson's column, which includes inaccuracies of the both-sides-do-it genre, but his criticisms of this Stupid Republican Trick are right on point. ...
... New York Times Editors: "The Republicans in the Senate seem to have had no trouble inserting themselves into the Iran nuclear negotiations, when they had no business interfering. Yet they have shown little interest in carrying out a job that is squarely within their constitutional mandate -- drafting an authorization for war against ISIS that Democrats can support and President Obama will sign."
We Ain't in De Basement. Paul Krugman: "... the Fed's critics keep insisting that easy-money policies will lead to a plunging dollar. Reality, however, keeps declining to oblige. Far from heading downstairs to debasement, the dollar has soared through the roof. (Sorry.)... Actually, the strong dollar is bad for America. In an immediate sense, it will weaken our long-delayed economic recovery by widening the trade deficit. In a deeper sense, the message from the dollar's surge is that we're less insulated than many thought from problems overseas."
Carol Leonig & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: "Two Secret Service agents suspected of driving under the influence and striking a White House security barricade disrupted an active bomb investigation and may have driven over the suspicious package itself, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Arit John of Bloomberg Politics: "... in recent years the Secret Service has bounced from one alcohol-and-incompetency fueled scandal to the next: prostitutes and partying in El Salvador, prostitutes and partying in Colombia, a drunk agent passed out in the hallway of a hotel in The Netherlands, plus another in Miami, an armed contractor in the elevator, sniper bullets that hit the White House, last fall's fence jumper, and the downplaying of the fence jumper. Adding salt into the current Secret Service wound, nearly two years ago agents shot and killed a woman, who seemed to be confused, for driving through a similar checkpoint.... The Secret Service, signed into existence on the last day of President Lincoln's life, eventually came into being, in part, because the person tasked with protecting Lincoln that day was drinking on the job.... Next month is the 200th anniversary of the Lincoln assassination...." CW: Really? ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic has another rundown of the Secret Service's recent lapses.
Scott Higham of the Washington Post: International Relief and Development Inc. of Arlington, Va., "the largest nonprofit contractor working for the U.S. Agency for International Development during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, billed the government $1.1 million for staff parties and pricey retreats -- three of them held at one of the poshest destinations on the East Coast, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Pennsylvania." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
... John Eligon, et al., of the New York Times: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday denounced the shootings of two police officers during a late night protest here as 'heinous and cowardly attacks' that came just as this embattled city was taking 'good faith steps' toward rebuilding trust in law enforcement. 'This was not someone trying to bring healing to Ferguson,' Mr. Holder said at a news conference in Washington. 'This was a damn punk, a punk, who was trying to sow discord.'" ...
... Wesley Lowery, et al., of the Washington Post, update information on the shooting & its aftermath. ...
... Jon Eligon & Eli Yokley of the New York Times: "Just as Ferguson seemed to be moving past the stunning abuses detailed by the federal authorities, having shed its city manager, police chief, municipal judge and other officials accused of running a racially biased legal system, those four gunshots threatened to reopen the well of anger, unrest and racial tension that has stifled life here since Mr. Brown's death last summer from shots fired by a white police officer. 'To actually have the police injured by gunshots -- that is not even a small setback, it is a real setback,' said Courtney Curtis, a Democratic state representative whose district includes Ferguson. 'It takes away the forward momentum the protesters did have.'" ...
... Jennifer Fermino of the New York Daily News: "Just when you thought Rudy Giuliani couldn't get crazier, the former NYC mayor blamed Obama for the brutal beatdown at a Brooklyn McDonalds -- and said the president should be more like Bill Cosby. Obama is ignoring 'enormous amounts of crime' committed by African-Americans, Giuliani said Thursday. And he said President Obama is to blame for the brawl inside a McDonald's in Brooklyn as well as the shooting of two cops in Ferguson because of the anti-police 'tone' coming from the White House." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Before Barack Obama took office, crime was not a problem. (You had a few rotten apples like Bernard Kerik committing the odd crime, but nobody in politics could be blamed for that.) Since Obama became president, crime has ... okay, it's continued to fall, but it feels worse. Or at least it feels worse to Rudy Giuliani....What do you call holding Barack Obama responsible for every crime committed by a black person, anywhere?" CW: And what do you call a person who does not live in an evidence-based world? Oh, I believe Jennifer Fermino led with the answer. ...
... Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "Fox News' 'Outnumbered' co-host Andrea Tantaros said on Thursday that Eric Holder is 'an attorney general for the criminal' while arguing that the Obama administration is at least partially to blame for the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., early Thursday. 'Eric Holder has proven, time again, he is an attorney general for the criminal, by the criminal, and of the criminals in the United States of America,' Tantaros said."
There is no basis,tradition, or even in contemporary practice for finding that in the Constitution the right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after a conviction.... With any luck, we shall avoid ever having to face this embarrassing question again. -- Justice Antonin Scalia, concurrence in Herrera v. Collins, 1993
... ** Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Lara Bazelon in Slate: "If you are a wrongfully convicted man or woman in this country, it is extremely difficult -- if not outright impossible -- to win your case by advancing the simple argument that you are innocent. Sounds crazy, right? But it's true. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to hold that the federal Constitution allows for so-called freestanding claims of innocence, that is, the right to be let out of prison simply because you didn't do it, without any other 'technical' violation to back up your argument. In the United States, the inmate who raises a compelling case of innocence after a constitutionally proper trial may well be doomed."
NBC News: "A group of 104 legal scholars and immigration law instructors signed a statement calling the Texas judge's decision that blocked President Barack Obama's immigration executive action 'deeply flawed.' In their statement provided to NBC News and made public Friday, the group argued that the executive action programs that would have shielded millions from deportation and provided them permission to work 'are well within the legal authority of the federal executive.'"
Gene Robinson on the SAE Boys on the Bus: "... the real stunner was the line describing what to do with any black man who might have the gall to seek to join their fraternity: 'You can hang 'em from a tree.' Whoa. Just like that, they went all the way to lynching? And thought it was funny? Now, I realize that these soft, pampered, privileged, ridiculous frat boys are not likely to attempt actual violence against black people. But they wouldn't have to. The attitudes their words reveal can, and probably will, show themselves in other ways.... There is still a shocking degree of racial segregation in American society -- no longer de jure but de facto. Segregation reinforces structural racism, which increasingly is not addressed or even acknowledged."
Erica Goode of the New York Times: "... a new series of studies ... rais[es] the possibility that although conservatives may report greater happiness than liberals, they are no more likely to act in ways that indicate that they really are happier.... In fact, when behaviors rather than self-reports were examined, liberals seemed to have a small but statistically significant happiness edge."
Jonathan Chait: "... the two [political] parties are not mirror images of each other. They are asymmetrical. One is organized around practical objectives, the other ideological ones. Practical objectives lend themselves more easily to compromise. They can be measured in empirical terms. Ideological objectives defy compromise and practical assessment.... Republicans won't have a real health-care plan until they become a different kind of party."
Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post: "The NRA, even more ridiculous than usual.... The NRA's maximalist rhetoric, designed to stoke paranoia about liberal elites disarming, then tyrannizing everyday Americans, isn't just unconvincing -- it's often insultingly so. It's incredible that there is still a choir that nods along with this sermon."
This post by Jason Koebler in Motherboard shows the FAA is still confused about drones.
Where's Vlad? Adam Taylor of the Washington Post: "Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't been seen for days, and now people are beginning to wonder why."
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton's disclosure that she exclusively used a private email address while she was secretary of state and later deleted thousands of messages she deemed 'personal' opens a big picture window into how vague federal email guidelines have been for the most senior government leaders. Although the White House has strict requirements dating back two decades that every email must be saved, there is no such requirement for federal agencies. Instead they are in charge of setting their own policies for determining which emails constitute government records worthy of preservation and which ones may be discarded."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Elias Isquith of Salon on the media's Hillary circus: "... while I'm certainly used to seeing my colleagues in the political press devote their time and energy to cynical, superficial stories that few people outside the politico-media elite will bother to read, I've never seen them do it with such unabashed gusto. I've never seen them be quite so shameless about placing themselves, and their relationship with a politician, at the front-and-center of the national stage. I've never seen them be so gleeful and self-conscious about creating a circus, either. It is, quite simply, embarrassing."
Presidential Race
Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "In the last presidential contest, super PACs were an exotic add-on for most candidates. This time, they are the first priority. Already, operatives with close ties to eight likely White House contenders have launched political committees that can accept unlimited donations -- before any of them has even declared their candidacy. The latest, a super PAC called America Leads that plans to support Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, was announced Thursday.... Potential candidates want to help their super PAC allies raise as much money as possible now, before their official campaigns start. That's because once they announce their bids, federal rules require them to keep their distance."
"The Clinton Way." David Von Drehle of Time: Hillary "Clinton's failure to defuse the email issue, along with a growing list of questions about the family's relentless fundraising and her husband's choice of companions, has revived hopes among erstwhile rivals in the Democratic Party that the Hillary dreadnought might actually be sinkable.... Backbiting inside the Clinton campaign -- a hallmark of her failed 2008 presidential effort -- has begun to leak into the political press.... Along with her husband ... Hillary Clinton is the co-creator of a soap-operatic political universe in which documents vanish, words like is take on multiple meanings and foes almost always overplay their hand. ...
... They're taking all this very seriously at the right-wing Weekly Standard: "TIME Cover Gives Hillary Horns." ...
... David Graham: In her press conference, Clinton "asserted 1) a thorough investigation that included 'going through' roughly 60,000 emails; 2) a standard of erring on the side of disclosing 'anything' that could 'possibly' be viewed as work related; 3) a 'thorough' process robust enough to warrant 'absolute confidence' in its results; 4) a process to turn over emails that could plausibly be characterized as 'unprecedented.' With an assist from Von Drehle's reporting, Graham shows that Clinton's assertions were "misleading" at best.
... David Brock in a USA Today op-ed: Trey "Gowdy should apply the same standard he's applying to Clinton to himself and his staff. They should release all their e-mail -- public and private -- unless, of course, they are the ones hiding something -- perhaps their partisan motivations and strategic leaking to the media." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Nestled in a piece by Jonathan Topaz at Politico about Bernie Sanders' ambivalence about (and very limited preparations for) a presidential run is this comment from the proto-candidate about the Issue of the Week:
'Why am I asked about Hillary Clinton every other day, about her emails? Do you know what -- I can't swear to you on this -- last I checked, here in Washington, do you know how many calls I got from Vermont on Hillary Clinton's emails? Zero. Yet I can't walk down the hallways here without hearing about Hillary Clinton's emails.' -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Jonathan Chait: "Last year, Marco Rubio defined himself as the Republican presidential candidate who was primarily concerned with the middle class. He gave speeches about poverty. He gave speeches about the struggles of the middle class. It wasn't working terribly well. So Rubio has updated his tax plan, the old version of which gave a big tax cut to the rich, so it now gives an absolutely gargantuan tax cut to the rich. The new Rubio is hobnobbing with members of the Koch family and other billionaires, and ... they really like the cut of his jib." CW: For those of you who enjoy articles that LOL at Republican hypocrisy, this one's a winner.
Beyond the Beltway
Daniel Perez of the Houston Chronicle: "A bill restricting the rights of citizens to record the police was filed in Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday. The House Bill 2918 introduced by Texas Representative Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) would make private citizens photographing or recording the police within 25 feet of them a class B misdemeanor, and those who are armed would not be able to stand recording within 100 feet of an officer.... An appeals court in Glik v. Cunniffe ruled unanimously that private citizens are allowed to videotape police in 2011, so this bill would go against the set precedent." CW: No kidding.
Bill Laitner of the Detroit Free Press: "The Detroiter who stunned the world with Olympian walks to his suburban factory job -- and stunned himself by attracting gifts of a new car and $350,000 in donations -- abruptly moved Tuesday to a location he felt was safer, police said. James Robertson, 56, was helped by Detroit police to move just minutes after crime-prevention specialists offered him temporary living quarters, Detroit police Capt. Aric Tosqui said.... Driving Robertson's decision was news that last week Detroit police arrested a man charged in the killing of an 86-year-old Detroiter who disappeared in December, three days after the elderly man was said to have won $20,000 in a lottery game, police said.... Robertson's decision to move came after he confided that ... some of the other residents at the boardinghouse where he lived wanted a share of his windfall and threatened Robertson with violence, said [banker Blake] Pollock, 47, of Rochester, who befriended the intrepid commuter."
News Ledes
AP: "A knife-carrying Army veteran who scaled a White House fence and dashed into the executive mansion before being caught took a plea deal Friday. Omar Gonzalez, 43, pleaded guilty to two federal charges. Federal sentencing guidelines recommend between 12 and 18 months in prison. The Sept. 19 incident in which Gonzalez made it into the mansion's East Room preceded the disclosure of other serious Secret Service breaches in security for President Barack Obama and ultimately led to Julia Pierson's resignation as director of the agency."
Guardian: "Steve Jobs rejected an offer of a liver transplant from Tim Cook in 2009, a new biography of the late Apple co-founder reveals. Despite becoming increasingly ill from cancer, Jobs angrily turned down the proposal by the man who would go on to run Apple after he died."
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Reader Comments (15)
Our founders created the concept of democracy. They recognized that a primary part of democracy is the elimination of religion as a part of government. But they made one mistake. It is the word and concept of 'United'. What we have in fact is 50 countries who share some necessary activities, most notable is military. But the rest is shared only when convenient. And the problem is that there is virtually nothing that is "convenient" for all.
The other major problem is not the fault of the founders because they would never had seen this coming. We have a political system where the basic concept is corruption. The need for money in this world for election and the just plain personal greed means that we have no representation for the people. I said this the other day on the global warming issue that the problem we are having is the the International Association of Polar Bears doesn't have the funds to bribe Inhoff. Well it is a joke, but is is not funny. It is the definition of the USA. A better term would be the ASA. the Associated States of America.
Some good news for the planet:
"China has cut its use of coal, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, and installed more hydroelectricity, wind and solar power...In the past five years, OECD countries' economies grew nearly 7 per cent while their emissions fell 4 per cent, the IEA has found."
We CAN effectively use regulations to combat carbon emissions and NOT destroy jobs and the economy. Can't wait to see how the confederates spin this.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102501663#.
@Marie,
Thank you for the time and effort you put into your informative website, and also thank you to your commentators for the sources they regularly suggest to your readers.
On March 5, 2015 in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria wrote an informative account of the catastrophic cost of the "hard line" course again being advocated toward Iran. You may have already referenced his op-ed, but if you have not, his reminder of recent history is well worth the time of your readers.
Here is the link (I hope!): http://wapo.st/1wZ74ev
It was my good fortune to be a student at a great public university time when John F. Kennedy took the oath of office and became the first Catholic president of the United States. The courageous and sensible admonitions below, delivered by a WW II combat veteran, are taken from his stirring January 20, 1961 Inaugural Address. Kennedy's words surely seem relevant to the current political debate with respect to Iran:
"So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
Did some rummaging around on line this morning trying to find a past history of Secret Service blunders, but came up with very few. So the question I have is why under this president there have been so many royal screw ups. Did our SS guys get just as drunk or fiddle with just as many ladies of the night or do really stupid things like drive their car into a barricade on the front lawn? Maybe over a bomb? Is it just because nothing is secret anymore or does it have to do with Obama himself or is it a sign of bad vetting or bad oversight?
There was a tidbit I found that I was not aware of. On the night before Kennedy's assassination his secret service guys were drinking heavily. One can only speculate if hangovers had anything to do with the outcome––probably not. We do know that if it had been raining Kennedy would have been protected by a dome over the limo which given the Texas atmosphere ( lots of hate for Kennedy) it would have been prudent for the SS to insist on the dome.
Got a glimpse of Martin O'Malley at the Brookings last night on CSpan: He certainly is left of center––called Dodd-Frank lukewarm. He's been a mayor and a governor but as the latter his numbers were not high, but I don't as yet know why––too liberal? Anyway––I was impressed plus he has a smile that is most attractive.
@AK: I responded to one of your posts on yesterday's comments.
@Marvin: $$$$$ moves mountains and elections and makes the world go round and you hit the nail on the head with what you said ––Chiodo Sella testa, as the Godfather was wont to say.
Capt. Russ,
How will the confederates spin the fact that China has cut carbon emissions without "killing jobs" and impairing the economy?
One word: Communism.
That's all they have to say. No other explanation would be necessary. At least not to Fox and not to the zombies who elected them.
In the wingnut lexicon there is a long list of rebarbative bogeywords and phrases: liberal, same-sex, unionization, "urban", secular, climate change, feminism, equal rights, even democracy (if it includes blah people and other non-Christians and non-whites), but Communism is right near the top of scary bad terrible no-good words. It wouldn't matter if China had discovered the cure for cancer.
Remember, we're talking about children here.
Tom Cotton or some other McCarthyite grand inquisitor would craft a letter demanding that every Real 'merican sign on, absolutely refusing to go along with this commie plot to steal our freedoms and that anyone who does should be arrested and imprisoned, along with every member of their family including kids and grandparents (he actually did submit a bill demanding this kind of penalty--he called it a "corruption of blood" punishment and if that isn't a white supremacist sounding phrase, I've never heard a better one), because in no way will we go along with some Commie medical ploy no matter how many people are cured. Rather die than be saved by some Commie cure.
We keep making the mistake (I do as well) of thinking that at some point, these people will be embarrassed by their irrational idiocy, brought up short by the blank, unholy barbarity and insupportability of their positions.
Not only is that not the case, but the more jaw dropping the stupidity, the higher their stock rises with the zombies and the oligarchs. They really have no goal other than self-perpetuation, like a virus. They're like some kind of alien malignancy that has attached itself to the body politic and won't rest until it slithers inside the host and sucks off its life's blood leaving it drained and deformed.
They are children. Dangerous children. Children of the Damned.
Like it says in this trailer, it's either them or us. We haven't quite figured that out yet, but they have. It's a fight to the death for people like Cotton and they won't be swayed by facts, by proofs, or by reason.
@PD Pepe: See Arit John's piece which I linked earlier. Her arithmetic isn't so good, but she has a very short history of screw-ups, including the Kennedy story.
Marie
Update: I wrote to Bloomberg yesterday suggesting they correct her math, & I see they did. They've not got Lincoln's assassination as 150 years ago; in the original piece, she had written 200 years ago.
PD: Profile of O’Malley in this morning’s Guardian. Should answer your question about his popularity. (Hint: Taxes.)
Akhilleus: Commanizm, yes of course, but don't forget Agenda 21 Global Sustainability United Nations One Worlders.
PD,
Thanks for your response. It's true the Democrats have not been very organized for quite a long time, and since the dark days of Mourning Again in America, they've been even less so, being largely reactive than holding aloft the progressive standard and taking the fight to those who would turn back the clock.
Republicans have been ridiculously successful building a duplicitous brand (brandishing a faux populism while carrying water for the wealthy at the expense of middle class America) and enforcing a rigid discipline. However the paleocons who came out of the Reagan years have seen cracks appear in what was still, at least nominally, a conservative foundation. The deals they made with religious fundamentalists and other far right extremists, have turned that party into a chaotic monkey house of competing zealotry, and, because the GOP achieved its greatest success (the Reagan administration) by demanding and enforcing loyalty and eschewing any and all compromise, the various tribes now inhabiting the right-wing nut house have all adopted that essential requirement, with predictable but no less dire results.
A perfect time for the other party to have some kind of plan to woo those still not completely under the sway of the forces of ideological irrationalism to a more moderate and reasonable approach to political action, but they still seem mired in a reactionary mode. The signs of life given off by Sen. Warren offer hope for a better future, but we need something--and someone--now. That someone could be a number of someones, but the success of Republicans, who started off with a plan to conquer, should prompt the Democrats to craft a more organized party platform. It's true that the White House may be a difficult goal for the GOP, but having captured nearly all the other flags on the political landscape--local, state, federal governments, the courts, and the media--they may not even need the jewel in the crown in order to inflict their draconian policies on the rest of us. They're already doing it.
It's true that the Democrats, unlike the confederates, don't have the sort of media empire to undergird their every crazed whim, but they'll have to do without it.
Time is tight.
(And I don't mean the Booker T song--although that allows me to sneak it in anyway.... gotta do something to stave off clinical depression.)
Big wig GOP muck-a-muck disagrees with congress screwing with the president's dealings with foreign governments.
Stop the presses! Wire congress! (I know no one wires congress anymore but I like the expression.)
Anyway...
A prominent (prominent as in gigantic mountain of waste materials laced with yellowcake and blood stained rags from Abu Ghraib) Republican does not hold with congress meddling in the president's foreign affairing. He states that the president has the authority to go affairing all he likes (no "she", remember, Republican) without congress interfering or writing letters or pointing fingers or holding their breath or stamping their feet or any other mature conniptions.
But ONLY if that president is Ronald Reagan. Surprised?
Dickless Cheney is on record saying the following, which I'm pretty sure that Bill (Always Wrong) Kristol and Tom (Peace Sucks) Cotton and the other 47 percenters would agree with, stipulating, of course, that it does not apply to Democratic presidents, especially those of the Kenyan/Mooslim/Madrasa-trained/Negroid persuasion:
"[T]hroughout the Nation's history, Congress has accepted substantial exercises of Presidential power -- in the conduct of diplomacy, the use of force and covert action -- which had no basis in statute and only a general basis in the Constitution itself. ... [M]uch of what President Reagan did in his actions toward Nicaragua and Iran were constitutionally protected exercises of inherent Presidential powers."
Get it? If a white, Republican, addled ex B-movie actor, whose most famous role got him second billing to a monkey, wants to illegally and unconstitutionally sell weapons to foreign governments who have kidnapped our citizens and use that money to fund right-wing rape and murder squads on another continent, all under cover of super, triple, top secrecy, it's fine and dandy. But if a black Democrat wants to talk about a deal that will vastly improve the chances for a more peaceful relationship with that country (ie, not dropping bombs on them), well, fuck that for a game of soldiers.
Remember, pretty much anything (lying, cheating, torturing, war mongering, economy trashing, illegal surveillance of Americans, money laundering, death squad supporting) is A-Ok as long as it's done by a Confederate president.
Republicans are nothing if not consistently hypocritical.
By the way, has Trey Gowdy released all his e-mails yet?
Couple of posts to brighten your day. As a recent emigrant to NoCal from SoMN, these are especially gratifying:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/dispatch-from-great-lakes-which-one-did.html
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/oranges-vs-oranges.html
Okay, you're probably sitting around, scratching your head wondering who in the hell would vote for a loon like Tom Cotton.
Well, maybe you're not. Maybe you already know.
But I'll tell you anyway, 'cause I'm such a nice guy.
I read about this (yet another) right-wing religious fanatic horror story (I think "right-wing religious fanatic horror" should be made an official genre of psychopathic social dystopian non-fiction) a couple of weeks ago and decided against commenting on it out of pure weariness at all the hate and horror rising from the swamp of confederate ideology and fundamental Christian extremism. Besides there are only so many of these stories you can digest at one time. I'd need an additional organ, a kind of liver for intellectual detoxification, to accommodate more than a few of these stories every week.
I'll give you the skinny and you can check out the links, if you think you can take it.
So here we have a lovely couple in Arkansas, a state Rep, Justin Harris (R, of fucking course), and his wife, who run a Jesus indoctrination school for small children, the Growing God's Kingdom Preschool (and home for child rapers--just so you know where this is headed). One of Justin's great friends in Jesus, one Eric Francis, a teacher at the school (!!!), was given a nice present by the Harrises. Two little girls. Two young girls they didn't want anymore, whom they had adopted, girls from troubled backgrounds who they couldn't be bothered with anymore. So, they "rehomed" the kids to Justin's good rapist buddy. I didn't even know you could do that. "Rehome" adopted children? Is that like regifting? Anyway, once good buddy in Jesus Eric got the kids alone....
Well, it appears he only raped one of the little girls. The six year old.
But guess who is the victim here? You got it! Justin Harris and his wife, natch!
But listen, they didn't just toss those little girls out like garbage to be abused and horribly scarred. Because they had behavioral problems (I'm sure those problems aren't any worse after a bit of rapey-time), they called up an EXORCIST! I fucking kid you not. They took their biological sons out in the yard so they wouldn't hear the screaming during the exorcism of little girls, which because they're such good parents, had to be done because Jesus, and because those little girls were talking with SATAN, which just isn't cool and which is why they refused to clean up their rooms and not eat their porridge like good little adopted girls.
Holy fucking hell. There's a lot more to this story if you can stomach it.
So if you're ever wondering how fucking lunatics like Tom Cotton come to power, wonder no more.
You know, usually I don't want to go too overboard on stories like this because you convince yourself that loons like the Harrises represent a tiny anomalous dark corner of the world. That they must be an aberration. But they're not. This guy is an elected official, for fuck's sake. He ran a preschool that people sent their kids to! People vote for dangerous assholes like this. And like Tom Cotton. There are way too many people like this around to not acknowledge the devastating effects of confederate ideology promoted by so-called respectable people like Karl Rove and all the Fox assholes and the Kochs and given passes by people like Chuck fucking Todd.
Christ on a rape kit, what next?
Ak, I hope this doesn't push you over the edge but just saw in the NYT that Carly Fiorina is trying to shape herself as a confederate foil to Hillary Clinton.
While I'm no big fan of Hills, and would only vote for her if push comes to shove with no other viable Dem candidate, to Carly I say NFW!
Unwashed,
A Confederate Carly Carnival ride doesn't faze me in the slightest. In fact, I welcome it if for nothing more than its giddy entertainment value. Like a season of the Bachelorette with suitors like a belt-busting, drooling Chris Christie, a goggle eyed, education hating Scott Walker, an historically and scientifically challenged Marco Rubio, and a horribly bewigged Li'l Randy who might abduct her, get her high, and make her swear fealty to the idea of kicking minorities out of places of business, because freedom, a Fiorina candidacy merits inclusion with pop cultural low points like Real New Jersey Housewives Off on a Toot.
It would be amusing to see how the "business serious" nudniks and pretenders on the right try to recast Fiorina, one of the absolute dead last, laughingly worst "leaders" in US business history, a Potemkin CEO who lavished gigantic bonuses on herself while firing thousands of HP employees, and running the company into the ground, as the kind of "business savvy" candidate needed to run the US government as a corporation. Presumably the way the CEO president, George W. (Decider) Bush, ran the country... also into the ground, crushing the economy and burying us under a mountain of debt. Way to go, Georgie! Shoulda stayed in the backyard torturing small animals under the watchful eye of your mom, Barbara "Frau Blucher" Bush.
Nah....the threat of a Fiorina candidacy only makes me wish I still knew someone who owned a bong.
Oh god. Akhilleus wins the internet. Killer line.....'only makes me wish I still knew someone who owned a bong'.
Thanks for the laugh. Damned few this week - Harris sorta finished it off.