;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 30, 2013
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The head of the National Security Agency on Tuesday vigorously challenged recent reports that the United States had been gathering the phone records of millions of Europeans, saying that the records had in fact been turned over by allied spy services.... The Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Tuesday that intelligence services in France and Spain had collected phone records of their citizens and turned them over to the N.S.A. as part of an arrangement to mitigate threats against American and allied troops and civilians.... [NSA director] General [Keith] Alexander and James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, broadly defended the N.S.A.'s practice of spying on foreign leaders. Such espionage, they said, was a basic pillar of American intelligence operations that had gone on for decades.... Such spying was essential, the officials said, because other countries, including allies, spy on the United States. The Wall Street Journal story, by Adam Entous & Siobhan Gorman, is here. The lede: "Widespread electronic spying that ignited a political firestorm in France and Spain recently was carried out by their own intelligence services and not by the National Security Agency, U.S. officials say." ...
... Ellen Nakashima's more extensive report for the Washington Post is here. "Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, said reports to the contrary, based on revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, were 'completely false.' ... Apparently referring to a slide outlining the information, Alexander said the leaker and reporters 'did not understand what they were looking at.' ... The French and Spanish intelligence agencies have had extensive, long-running programs to share millions of phone records with the United States for counterterrorism purposes, according to current and former officials familiar with the effort.... Current and former U.S. officials also said the United States has been the target of espionage by its allies, including those in the European Union. In 2008, the German foreign intelligence service targeted the communications of at least 300 U.S. citizens or residents, according to two former officials. The surveillance was exposed, according to one of them, when the Germans inadvertently turned over communications data to their U.S. counterparts." ...
... Mark Landler & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "... James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the N.S.A. had kept senior officials in the National Security Council informed of surveillance it was conducting in foreign countries. He did not specifically say whether President Obama was told of these spying efforts, but he appeared to challenge assertions in recent days that the White House had been in the dark about some of the agency's practices." CW: This report is more-or-less an update of Schmidt's earlier report, linked above.
... New York Times Editors: "That Chancellor Merkel's cellphone conversations could fall under that umbrella is an outgrowth of the post-9/11 decision by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that everyone is the enemy, and that anyone's rights may be degraded in the name of national security. That led to Abu Ghraib, torture at the secret C.I.A. prisons, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, grave harm to international relations, and the dragnet approach to surveillance revealed by the Snowden leaks." ...
... CW: Because spying on Merkel is like Abu Ghraib & other torture??? Can't we work in Nazis & Hitler somehow? At least over at Firedoglake Peter Van Buren is describing Jay Carney as a more professional version of Goebbels. I know I'm the lonely liberal who can't get worked up about spying on our allies, but, well, I can't. ...
... Update. Keir Simmons & Michele Neubert of NBC News: "Amid the growing furor over allegations that the United States spied on some of its closest allies in Europe -- including German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- a quiet refrain is being repeated by intelligence insiders across the [European] continent: We all do it.... Former head of French intelligence Bernard Squarcini sounded more surprised at the claims that the political class did not know about the snooping." ...
... He Only Knows What He Reads in the Papers. Dana Milbank: "It stretches credulity to think that the United States was spying on world leaders without the president's knowledge, or that he was blissfully unaware of huge technical problems that threatened to undermine his main legislative achievement. But on issues including the IRS targeting flap and the Justice Department's use of subpoenas against reporters, White House officials have frequently given a variation on this theme.
"Question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?
"Answer: Not much, and about a minute ago." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama finds himself under fire on two disparate fronts these days, both for the botched rollout of his signature health care program and for the secret spying on allied heads of state. In both instances, his explanation roughly boils down to this: I didn't know. As a practical matter, no president can be aware of everything going on in the sprawling government he theoretically manages. But as a matter of politics, Mr. Obama's plea of ignorance may do less to deflect blame than to prompt new questions about just how much in charge he really is." ...
... NEW: Robert Pear: "Kathleen Sebelius ... apologized Wednesday for the frustration that millions of Americans have experienced while trying to shop for insurance on the HealthCare.gov website, even as she defended the problem-plagued rollout of President Obama's health care law and tried to explain the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of individual insurance policies." CW: The Times will likely update this story as testimony continues.
... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is kicking back at the contractors who blamed her agency for the botched ObamaCare website rollout. Sebelius blames a 'subset' of contractors who 'have not met expectations' for the website's problems in an opening statement she'll deliver Wednesday to the House Energy and Commerce Committee." ...
... Alex Seitz-Wald of the National Journal: "As Republicans in Washington prepare to grill Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday over problems a broken website is creating for accessing Obamacare, their fellow party members in a dozen-and-a-half states have added complications for people trying to access those benefits through alternate means.... Whether by fees, background checks, tests, extra training, certifications, threats of civil penalties, or delays, Republican legislatures and officials in at least 17 states across the country have thrown up all manner of bureaucratic roadblocks in front of the program. The officials say the regulations are necessary to protect consumers and their personal information, but health care reform advocates say the regulations, adopted only in states controlled by Republicans, are just part of a multipronged campaign to obstruct the implementation of the Affordable Care Act at every turn." ...
... Sarah Kliff & William Branigin of the Washington Post: "Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said: 'To the millions of Americans who've attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health-care coverage, I want to apologize to you that the Web site has not worked as well as it should. We know how desperately you need affordable coverage.' She offered assurances that the Web site 'can and will be fixed' and said that already 'we are seeing improvement each week.'" ...
... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Ms. Tavenner ... said that 'nearly 700,000 applications have been submitted to the federal and state marketplaces' in the last four weeks. But she repeatedly refused to say how many of those people had actually enrolled in health insurance plans since the federal and state marketplaces, or exchanges, opened on Oct. 1. 'That number will not be available until mid-November,' Ms. Tavenner said. 'We expect the initial number to be small.'" ...
... Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), employing traditional New Jersey rhetorical devices, contrasts the way Democrats worked to implement Medicare Part D, which they had opposed, with Republican obstruction of the ACA:
... Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee [Darrell Issa is on the case!] released documents Tuesday night showing one of the primary contractors for HealthCare.gov, CGI Federal, warned administration officials the Web site faced problems just weeks before its Oct. 1 launch. In a monthly report sent to Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Sept. 6, CGI officials wrote there were 'open risks' and 'open issues' that needed to be resolved. 'Due to the compressed schedule, there is not enough time built in to allow for adequate performance testing,' they wrote." The HHS pushback: It was a long report, which elsewhere said major milestones were on track, so concentrating on these few lines of the report is "cherrypicking." ...
... A pdf of the report is here. It is true that the bulk of the report lays out the good news. It's the last two pages that chart the bad news. It ain't sugarcoated. It should have caused tearing of hair & rending of garments. ...
No, we had tested the website and we were comfortable with its performance. Now, like I said, we knew all along there would be as with any new website, some individual glitches we would have to work out. But, the volume issue and the creation of account issues was not anticipated and obviously took us by surprise. And did not show up in testing. -- Marilyn Tavenner, yesterday, in testimony before a House committee
... As this CNN report by Joe Johns & Byron Wolf lays out, Tavenner's testimony is far less than truthful: "... the CGI document, which describes 'top risks currently open' and 'outstanding issues currently being mitigated' says the testing timeframes are 'not adequate to complete full functional, system, and integration testing activities' and lists the impact of the problems as 'significant.' Another element is listed as 'not enough time in schedule to conduct adequate performance testing' and given the highest priority." ...
... Lena Sun & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "Notices are going out to hundreds of thousands of Americans informing them that their health insurance policies are being canceled as of Dec. 31. The notices appear to contradict President Obama's promise that despite the changes resulting from the law, Americans can keep their health insurance if they like it. Republicans have seized on the cancellations as evidence that the law is flawed and the president has been less than forthright in describing its impact." ...
... CW: I agree with the criticism of Obama. Long after wonks like Ezra Klein pointed out that the President's "promise" wasn't true, he continued to make it. This baffled me then; it baffles me now. Once the bill became law, all he had to say was, "Most of you can keep your health insurance if you like it." Wilfully & repeatedly misinforming the public is a serious problem for a president. ...
... Update. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post elaborates:
... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pushed back Tuesday against reports that the Obama administration knew millions of Americans would lose their health care plans under the Affordable Care Act, despite promising that people could keep their insurance if wanted to do so." ...
... ** Kate Pickert of Time: "Many Americans buying insurance coverage for 2014 may never get the chance to claim new federal tax credits to subsidize the cost of health insurance, due to an odd wrinkle in the signup process.... New tax credits, available to individuals earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $46,000 per year, can only be accessed through new ACA insurance marketplaces. Those who purchase coverage outside the exchanges cannot claim subsidies, even if they qualify for them." Some insurers are helping customers through the process, but some are emphasizing that the switch to the new policy is "automatic." If customers take the insurer at its word, they won't go thru the exchange to try to qualify for the tax credit. ...
... Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: "Developments in the rollout of Obamacare are coming with dizzying speed, though not as fast as the pileup of fiction and misunderstanding created by politicians, pundits and the news media." Hiltzik offers "a list of the latest themes you're hearing on America's healthcare reform, and what they mean." CW: Quite a good Reality Chek. ...
... Brian Beutler of TPM also delivers a good response to the "rate shock" stories that Republicans are pushing & the media are dutifully "reporting": "The disruption we’re seeing in the individual insurance market is mostly by design. And it's mostly a good thing. Until October, the individual market existed to sell insurance to people who needed it least. Rates were low for healthy people precisely because their old, sick neighbors were priced or locked out of the system. They were also low because many of the policies on the market didn't actually fulfill the function of insurance, which is to hedge against financial catastrophe.... Taken together, the changes create winners and losers, but almost by definition more winners than losers.... You could counter that by any moral standard the system the Affordable Care Act creates is preferable to the one we had before, which subsidized the Ted Cruz family to the tune of thousands of dollars a year and left 50 million people without any coverage at all." ...
... AND Paul Waldman of the American Prospect debunks two examples of piss-poor reporting by NBC & CBS. In both cases, reporters interview a person who suffered "sticker shock," but neither reporter bothers to compare the "shocked" person's potential new policy with the piece of crap they now have. (Waldman doesn't say so, but the CBS "great" reporter Jan Crawford is a well-known winger.) Thanks to contributor Janice for the link.
Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "... an unlikely coalition of business executives, evangelical groups and prominent conservatives [are] coming together to urge House Republicans to put broad immigration legislation on the House floor, ideally before the end of this year. On Tuesday, the group of more than 600 leaders from roughly 40 states descended on the Capitol for meetings with nearly 150 Republican lawmakers."
Obama 2.0. Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "The Senate unanimously confirmed Tom Wheeler, an investor and former industry lobbyist, to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday. The vote was delayed for two weeks by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who expressed concern about Wheeler's views on political disclosure rules. Cruz lifted his objection after Wheeler assured him in a private meeting Tuesday that tougher disclosure requirements for the donors behind political TV ads are 'not a priority' for him. The Senate also unanimously confirmed Michael O'Rielly, a staffer for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), to one of the two FCC seats reserved for Republicans. The confirmation of the two nominees returns the five-member commission to full-strength. " ...
... Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate leaders are girding for a difficult fight over President Barack Obama's nominations in the coming weeks that could again raising the specter of a possible rules change in the chamber." ...
... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senate Democrats plan to force a vote this week to fill a vacancy on the court widely considered the country's second highest, threatening to reopen the bitter fight over limiting the filibuster if Republicans follow through on their pledge to block the nomination."
Maureen Dowd has quite an interesting column on former Vice President Heart O'Darkness. The Sanjay Gupta interview of O'Darkness was news to me.
Rick Santelli of CNBC, who some credit with starting the Tea Party movement after he ranted against helping people with underwater mortgages, took on Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Fama yesterday. You could say Santelli was out of his depth. At one point, Fama told him, "There's so much confusion in what you said it's difficult to answer." With video.
Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times: "The Capitol Hill memorial service for Thomas S. Foley, the former House speaker, brought together Republicans and Democrats who just two weeks ago were fighting about the government shutdown, but who were united in praise on Tuesday of a man who himself was a victim of partisan rancor two decades ago." CW: I listened to the whole service (while I was doing other things), & I found it fascinating, a rose-colored view of history by them that were there -- all of it shaded by the way things are now. C-SPAN has a page for the video, but it happens to be a black screen at this writing. ...
... Update: The CSPAN pages for the Foley memorial were still down this morning, but the memorial service is now up on this C-SPAN page.
Gubernatorial Race
Ben Pershing & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "Opposition to the tea party movement has reached a new high in Virginia, a Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll shows, kicking a key leg of support out from under Ken Cuccinelli II as he tries to win the governor's race on a strongly conservative platform. Cuccinelli (R), the state attorney general, now trails businessman Terry McAuliffe (D) by 12 percentage points among likely voters, the survey shows. And Cuccinelli's decline comes as Virginians are increasingly turned off by the movement that has backed him strongly and with which he shares many views." ...
... Oops! Don't Count Out Kenny Yet. Quinnipiac U.: "The Virginia governor's race is going down to the wire with Democrat Terry McAuliffe clinging to a slight 45 - 41 percent likely voter lead over Republican State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, and 9 percent for Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today." CW: If Cuccinelli can grab a chunk of Sarvis' vote (which so far has held pretty steady at 9 or 10 percent), it will be Governor Kenny.
Ben Goad of the Hill: "The Obama administration on Tuesday said it will seek to discourage the construction of coal plants in foreign countries through the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions. The effort marks the latest step in President Obama's initiative to combat the effects of global warming through executive power in lieu of action from the divided Congress." ...
Regional News
Michael Wines of the New York Times: "The leaders of three Pacific Coast states and British Columbia have announced a broad alliance to combat climate change, including new joint steps to raise the cost of greenhouse gas pollution, promote zero-emission vehicles and push for the use of cleaner-burning fuels in transportation.... The governors of California, Oregon and Washington and the premier of British Columbia said the compact could simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and create new clean-energy jobs.... But while California and British Columbia have already taken steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it was unclear whether legislatures in Oregon and Washington could be persuaded to endorse the plan." CW: Let's see if the laboratories of democracy can do what the U.S. Congress won't.
Local News
New York Times Editors on the Texas abortion law case [stories linked in yesterday's Commentariat]: "Unfortunately, Judge Yeakel largely upheld a second bogus 'safety' measure. He allowed to stand the provision in the law limiting medication abortions to an outmoded protocol for the use of abortion-inducing drugs. The protocol was established years ago by the Food and Drug Administration. Current medical practices now use a safer and more effective protocol."
News Lede
TPM: "Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (R) has been named president-elect of the Boy Scouts of America. Gates will serve both as a member of the Boy Scouts of America executive committee and president-elect, according to Scouting Magazine. Once Gates is approved by the voting members of the National Council of Boy Scouts he will serve for two years as the nation president effective May 2014." CW: Good. Maybe he can get the organization past its anti-gay fetish.
Share Article
Reader Comments (16)
The Cooch, had he a fair-to-middlin’ grasp of reality, would have seen that 6th Century mores were losing favor with voters. But he didn’t and he didn’t. Rather he doubled down and trotted in Santorum and Cruz to bolster up his sag. Kinda like filling a leaking canoe with concrete to patch the hole.
From yesterday's thread:
Haley Simon: "What? No David Sedaris fans here? Youth in Asia is an halarious piece from his collection 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'. I think it may have been published at the start of his career."
CW: You can listen to Sedaris reading "The Youth in Asia" here. It's a hoot.
Marie
Like Michael Hiltzik, Paul Waldman of "The American Prospect" takes journalists to task for just running with the ratings-grabbing stories of the cancellation of crappy policies, and not following up with research to determine if the situation is as dire as the headlines proclaim. I was frustrated this morning reading the Jonathan Weisman/Robert Pear article in The Times, which referenced Eric Cantor's constituent, Bruno Gora, whose new policy apparently would cost $3400/yr more. The reporters only offered this: "In an interview, Mr. Gora said he had not been able to determine if he would qualify for federal subsidies because he could not get on to the website."
Paul Waldman: "Journalists have a natural inclination to cover bad news over good and to be skeptical of the government, which is usually healthy. But if you aren't careful it can also lead to misleading reporting. If you're going to do a story presenting one person as a victim of the law, it might be a good idea to make sure they are what you say they are."
http://prospect.org/article/another-phony-obamacare-victim-story
"I know I'm the lonely liberal who can't get worked up about spying on our allies, but, well, I can't. ...:
I'm with you Marie.
How about we spy on the people who shut down the government?
Re; favorite spy lies; it's perceivable, possible, probable; but not provable that the person in question did or did not do whatever, whoever claimed they may or may not have done. What? Oh, that phone tap; maybe. They do it too.
Re: MoDo on Mr. Undisclosed Location: So it's a good idea to invade countries to "prove"" they don't have WMD's? What kind of reasoninng is that? He said that limiting the blood supply to his brain didn't affect his judgement. I beg to differ. Something did and continues to so.
It boggles the mind that anyone would think that one trillion dollars, 4000+ dead Americans, at least half a million dead Iraqis, destruction of the infrastructure, the ascension of Iran, civil war in Iraq, refugees fleeing, etc., etc. are worth the cost just to put his tiny mind at rest. I'm sure that a veteran sitting in a wheelchair doesn't think it was. This man and his family are the personification of evil.
Of course, the fact that Iraq has lots of oil couldn't have had anything to do with the invasion, now could it?
Dianne Feinstein is another lonely liberal who seems to have approved all monitoring of her neighbors, i.e. fellow citizens, always. It almost seems like a liberal macho contest that certain liberals can go there to do that.
Essentially, the government wants to expand all speech to be admissible in court. Anyone who babbles thoughtlessly could be threatened with legal action and incarceration. This resembles holding juvenile criminal activity against someone their entire lives. The inexorable expansion of government monitoring, SPYING, to me suggests that freedom of thought and speech is perceived as threatening to existing order. "Oh, this isn't fascism because we have laws." These new laws to go with new technology narrow and restrict previously existing definitions of free expression and free speech. I'm reminded here of liberal support for Andrea Dworkin where censorship is a central tactic. Dworkin and her running mate Catherine MacKinnon actively worked to suppress other viewpoints from being heard.
Spying and the threat of spying suppress free expression and ideas by the threat, real or imagined, of punishment and negative consequences. The few end up in possession of the information of and about the many; all the while the many fund through their taxes their own surveillance. This is sort of like if Exxon, GE and JPMorgan end up in charge of an economy and government of 330 million people. And Feinstein has gotten rich while she has been in office and reading other people's secrets.
Tend to agree with Marie that data mining by the gubmint is not so much a threat, at least until they try to use warrantless info in prosecutions. The intrepid Mr. Nader has a piece on data mining:
http://tinyurl.com/ljml2b4
that suggests a thornier question: Might we be entering a repeat of the gilded age robber barons where data extraction, rather than the traditional extraction industries (land included) are heading us again towards corporate statism, averted last time by Trust Busting Teddy.
@citizen625: As Eugene Fama told Rick Santelli, "There's so much confusion in what you said it's difficult to answer."
First, most liberals consider Dianne Feinstein a moderate, not a liberal. She's good on most social issues, the environment & gun control, but she's best known as a military hawk.
Second, "And Feinstein has gotten rich while she has been in office and reading other people's secrets." Feinstein doesn't read other people's secrets, although she chairs the Intelligence Committee, so she knows other countries' secrets that we don't know. There is no connection, of which I'm aware, between her getting rich & being on the Intelligence Committee. Her own holdings are in blind trusts. She is married to an investment banker. Do you have some evidence that she is feeding him "other people's secrets" which she gleaned from her inside knowledge of U.S. intelligence activities? It's possible. If so, do tell.
Third, "Spying and the threat of spying suppress free expression and ideas by the threat, real or imagined, of punishment and negative consequences." I don't know how many times I can say that no one can suppress anyone else's thoughts. I'm not sure why that is such a difficult concept to grasp. But notice how this obvious truth has not stopped you from having -- and in this case, expressing -- the idea that spying can suppress ideas.
Fourth, I don't remember a damned thing about the liberal ticket you mention. Not gonna look it up, either. Sorry. So I can't address whether or not these two feminists were into censorship.
Marie
@Janice. Good catch on the Times article. What the reporters write is, "Mr. Gora, 61, was offered alternatives, including one that would lock in his existing benefits. But, said Mr. Gora, a self-employed printing distributor, his premiums could rise by as much as $3,400 a year. In an interview, Mr. Gora said he had not been able to determine if he would qualify for federal subsidies because he could not get on to the website."
Note that Gora's premiums could rise by as much as $3,400 a year. Yeah, but maybe that's if he buys the plan with the lowest deductible & no co-pay. If he has a good policy now, his premiums aren't going to rise much at all -- he's 61 years old, so he isn't getting the cheapo rates younger people get for crummy policies. Plus, even tho Virginia doesn't have its own exchange so Boda definitely can't get benefits under the Medicaid expansion, as you suggest, he might qualify for a tax credit. The reporters don't bother to investigate this possibility.
Most telling of all is the lead-in to the Boda anecdote: "Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, pointed to Bruno Gora...."
Marie
Looks like Dowd has written her biannual decent column. And although it doesn't really serve as a corrective for the noxious sludge exiting the open, clacking mouths of the execrable Cheneys, pere et fille, they getting the benefit of nearly wall to wall coverage from the MSM and the right-wing media echo chamber, it's well done and overdue.
The message is clear however. "We are never wrong. We never accept responsibility (a wingnut staple). Whatever we say is, by definition, true and anyone who says different is a traitor (a wingnut greatest hit)" And, of course, "We are the only ones deserving of decent health care. Special treatment is our just desert"
Certainly Cheney's bills for his malevolent ticker must run into the high hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, over the years, paid for by all of us, by the way. Them that gots gets. Them that don't can go away and die. The Republican motto. Not to mention the special treatment he received from the Bushies. Can't you hear the obnoxious screaming that would have taken place, especially from Cheney himself, if it had been a Democrat with heart problems who was cleared to take the reins of power by doctors who had never examined him or her.
The hypocrisy is so normal at this stage that it's impossible to believe a Republican is speaking without lying, and without the protective cover of the idea that it's okay for them but not for everyone else. So Cheney gets a new heart and gets to hang around a little longer spreading poison while screeching that Americans who aren't wealthy and connected, like him, deserve only to die in debt and agony. Paul Ryan makes it in life because of social security and hand outs from the government but he's made it his life's mission to deny anyone else the benefits he received. Rand Paul certifies himself as an eye doctor.
Barbarossa is right. It's not just hypocrisy. This is some evil shit going on.
And I guess the pop culture idea that a new heart brings with it not only a reprieve from death for the new owner, but some of the karma from the person from which it came. Either that's a crock or the previous owner was a Mafia hit man. In any event, Cheney is still the same smirking, self-important, evil rat fucker he's always been. And daughter Liz is not far behind. Another privileged piece of shit who has had every advantage in life but works day and night to stick it to those who have nothing.
Where-in-the-hell do these people come from?
And, at least for today, Maureen Dowd is back in my good graces.
I'm sure she's thrilled.
From the "Holy Shit, Isn't She Dead Yet? Department" comes a very special message from Phyllis ("it's not rape if you're married, girls") Schlafly. Remember ol' Phyllis? Crazy, crackpot Phyllis?
So, Phyllis issued a radio commentary the other day carried by Wingnut Network stations (pretty much all 81,000 Clear Channel outlets) in which she takes the standard right-wing ploy of jiggering with history until it's unrecognizable as such and takes that scam to it's logical conclusion, which is ignore all history, all facts, and just MAKE SHIT UP.
Ready, class? Now pay attention.
Phyllis says the Statue of Liberty has nothing to do with immigration. Yup. Now you may have thought that Emma Lazarus poem about tired huddle masses was exactly that, but Phyllis says ixnay to all that blithering liberal nonsense. What Emma meant to say was "tired huddled masses of rich, white Republicans".
"It's the Statue of Liberty..." not the statue of dirty non-white people who won't vote for us.
I kid you not. Don't forget that Ms. Schlafly (that 'ms' ought to piss her off royally) recently denounced immigration reform because “There’s not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican.”[
And there you have it. So she tells the truth once every fifty years or so. Still not as good as a broken clock which is right twice a day.
But don't take my word for it:
No, she's not dead, but she might as well be.
@Ak No! no! no! believe our girl Phyl misspoke, think she meant '...the befuddled masses of rich, white, OLD REPUBLICANS." ('tho I could be wrong, maybe her reference was '...the huddled masses inside gated communities!')
Websters: Phyliss Schafly: A form of dementia brought on by
contact with like personalities without a clue. Also noted that people
placed a plague at the base of the statue. Wouldn't it have been
better to place a plaque at the base? Sorry, but I do this all the time
with my red ink marker whenever reading books, magazines, news-papers and I'm almost out of markers at this point.
The fact that Schlafly has the same first name as mine always made me wince. She has been a thorn in my liberal flesh for so long that when she surfaces again I feel the pain intensely.
Enjoyed the Sedaris bit that Marie linked and had a good laugh. Diane's Ms Frida, the English Bulldog with no bottom teeth and poop problems, Kate's male three legged cat, Tripod, and JJG's Tucker, the pizza stealing cat could have also made a good threesome in some kind of amusing scenario. Sedaris has an article in the current New Yorker about his family which sounds very much like all those pets.
As far as Cheney, and his obnoxious daughter whose rhetoric from day one chills one to the bone, let's remember that the heart that is nestled in his insides is not his. When we'd like to say to him, "Oh, Dick, have a heart," it does not compute since he really, truly does not have one of his own.
Looks like the Dems finally have a leader. Not that reluctant and dithering guy in the White House. It's that cranky old desert rat from Nevada, who seems to be abetted by that old guy from Vermont. Maybe enough is finally enough. Who knows.