QOTD: Senatuh Beauregard Sessions
by digby
“Historically, spies were shot if they revealed information helpful to the enemy.”
Via Raw Story, which reports that quote was from a “senate hearing convened in order to arrive at an official definition of what persons can be defined as journalists under the law.” Seriously.
Shoot, it’s just pop!
by digby
Does everyone remember this adorable little gag?
Sure you do. How about this?
On the September 15 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh responded to a caller who discussed her own diet and claimed that “it won’t be long, after that call — she talked about what food she’s going to fix and how she’s going to prepare it and where she’s going to get it — that woman will be reported to Michelle Obama. In the not-too-distant future, monitors assigned by the White House to listen to this show will have to report that woman because she is going to be considered a part of the obesity problem in the United States.”
Right wingers just hate the nanny state infringing on individual freedom, particularly when it comes to the food we eat.
Well, unless you’re a poor person in which case Republicans are perfectly happy to tell them exactly what they can and cannot eat:
Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday proposed legislation that would require people using federal food stamps to buy only healthy food.
The Healthy Food Choices Act, H.R. 3073, reflects a long-standing criticism that the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allows people to buy billions of dollars worth of junk food.
A 2012 study found that food stamps enable about $2 billion worth of junk food purchases each year, and that more than half of all SNAP benefits are used to buy sugary drinks.
Efforts to curb these purchases have been opposed by anti-hunger groups. But Roe said some states are already exploring ways to curb junk food purchases through the SNAP program, and argued that the federal government needs to take steps as well.
I’m not a big proponent of eating or drinking a lot of sugar, but with Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity and their ilk going completely bonkers over the government making people buy soda in smaller cups and mildly suggesting that children should eat their vegetables it’s pretty obvious that they see this as a form of punishment.
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They revere and respect the law (except the ones they don’t like)
by digby
Via Raw Story, at a town hall meeting with Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R), this happened:
During a question and answer session at the meeting, [11-year-old Josie]Molina stepped up to the microphone and, with a quavering voice, asked, “Mr. DesJarlais, I have papers, but I have a dad who’s undocumented. What can I do to have him stay with me?”
Rather than make any attempt to assuage the girl’s fears, Desjarlais said, “Thank you for being here and thank you for coming forward and speaking,” but “the answer still kind of remains the same, that we have laws and we need to follow those laws and that’s where we’re at.”
The tea party crowd whooped and applauded wildly as the little girl took her seat, head down.
Right, we have laws and we need to follow those laws. Well, some of them anyway:
On October 1st, millions of Americans will be required to enroll in Obamacare and could lose access to their doctors and be forced to pay higher premiums and higher taxes. But there’s still time to stop it.
Republicans in Congress can stop Obamacare if they refuse to fund it.
Right. It’s “the law” but they don’t like it. They don’t like this either:
Congress has imposed a strict limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate, but for nearly 90 years, it has raised the ceiling well before it was reached. But since a large number of Tea Party-aligned Republicans entered the House of Representatives, in 2011, raising that debt ceiling has become a matter of fierce debate. This summer, House Republicans have promised, in Speaker John Boehner’s words, “a whale of a fight” before they raise the debt ceiling — if they even raise it at all.
The debts incurred by the government are all a result of laws that were passed by congress. They are now refusing to pay for them.
A Guttmacher Institute study found that 135 abortion restrictions were enacted at the state level in 2011 and 2012.
There have been quite a few attempts to limit abortion rights at the federal level, as well.
At the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Jan. 25, John Boehner told the crowd “making abortion a relic of the past” is “one of our most fundamental goals this year.”
Conservatives don’t care that they are tearing that little girl’s family apart and are refusing to change the immigration laws. They do care about stopping women from controlling their own reproduction, not paying bills that have already been incurred by the government and stopping implementation a law that was passed in spite of their opposition. So that’s fair game. They don’t like immigrants so sorry kid. No immigration reform for you.
(Oh, and by the way, the people who cheered that little girl’s comeuppance are the lowest form of scum. They didn’t have to do that. They enjoy it.)
Meanwhile, we have NRO carrying on about how the progressives are “legal revolutionaries” and a threat to the natural order. The projection here is mind-boggling:
Perhaps the most alarming fact about contemporary progressivism is that it is a movement led by radical lawyers. The use of the law to undermine our constitutional tradition is in effect the use of the law to undermine itself. But worse than that, it is the use of the legal profession as a kind of revolutionary instrument. That is a particular problem because the legal profession has always had a special role in the Anglo-American common law tradition as precisely an anti-revolutionary instrument–a repository of cautionary precedent and prudent mulishness. “The English or the American lawyer inquires into what has been done, the French lawyer into what one ought to wish to do,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835.
Media Matters sets the record straight:
Spurred on by right-wing media, the conservative legal movement has steadily increased its challenges to established precedent on topics ranging from the ability of the federal government to regulate the economy, the protection of the right to vote from racial discrimination, the ability for workers to effectively advocate, access to justice for plaintiffs other than well-funded corporations, prohibitions on the corruptive influence of money on elections, the ability of the country to offer equal opportunity in education for all, and the president’s centuries-old power to appoint officials during recesses, just to name a few.
And then, of course, there is abortion.
If they can’t change, repeal or ignore laws they don’t like, they just hold their breath until they turn blue.
Getting lectures from these radical obstructionists about “the rule of law” is like getting lectures from Dick Cheney on pacifism.
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The Wild, Wild West: eat your heart out edition
by digby
Mother Jones reports on how efficiently the US is managing our millions of dollars of support for the allegedly moderate Syrian rebels. We’re awesome:
In recent weeks, the Obama administration and hawks favoring a strike on Syria have called for the continued support of supposedly moderate rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The United States has been sending millions of dollars in nonlethal aid to the rebels since February, and in June President Obama authorized secretly supplying weapons to opposition fighters…
The Syrian Support Group, a US-based nonprofit that is the only organization the Obama administration has authorized to hand out nonlethal US-funded supplies to the rebels, insists it keeps track of who’s receiving this assistance based on handwritten receipts provided by rebel commanders in the field. According to Dan Layman, a spokesman for the group, this level of oversight is sufficient to guarantee US assistance is going to the right rebels and is being used appropriately. “What we’re getting from [FSA commanders] in receipts directly reflects what’s been given out and to whom, I’m very confident,” he says. “The government regularly asks us for updates and new receipts, often faster than we can produce them.” Layman doesn’t know if or how the US government verifies these receipts.
[…] Relying on local commanders to guarantee US assistance is managed effectively could lead to “massive corruption,” warns Aki Peritz, a senior policy adviser for Third Way and a former CIA counterterrorism analyst. Peritz notes that the supplies being handed out by the Syrian Support Group can be sold for cash or traded for weapons and ammunition.
Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former commissioner for the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, says that in war zones, “it’s in a commander’s interest to give exaggerated numbers. We often see situations where a commander starts out with, say, three brigades, and then drops to one brigade, and continues to faithfully give receipts for the other two missing units. We call them ‘ghost employees.'” He adds, “I think Syria is the Wild, Wild West as far as knowing who is doing what.”
I know it’s verbotten to talk about Iraq in the context of Syria but I cannot help but be reminded of the “issues” we had with disappearing cash during that debacle. We don’t seem to be very sophisticated about this. But then we have money to burn so it’s no biggie, right? (The savings from kicking kids off food stamps ought to pay for a week or so anyway.)
It’s worth it even if it gets into the hands of folks like this?
This spring, one militia leader affiliated with the FSA—his brigade has since been kicked out—was filmed eating a dead soldier’s heart. “This stuff happens rarely, but it’s unfortunate,” Layman says. “With the guy who was eating a heart, he was part of a moderate faction…We work with Idriss and let him know that he needs to prevent these things.”
Well that’s a relief. We definitely don’t need any more “moderates” eating human hearts. It really hurts the image of our freedom fighters.
This has all the markings of the kind of foolishness we embarked upon in Afghanistan during the 80s. We helped organize and arm the fighter that turned into ad Qaeda. It worked out very well for us.
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Yes, this IS insane
by digby
So this is actually happening in America in 2013:
How can I possibly be arguing about the ‘right’ for blind people to use guns? This is INSANE.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 12, 2013
It’s simple, @piersmorgan . You could end this now. Just show us gun crime stats from the blind. Waiting.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 12, 2013
All I’m saying is that if you’re going to base your gun control on blind people owning guns, show us all the shooting deaths from the blind.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 12, 2013
You are pushing this discrimination, not me @piersmorgan .
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 12, 2013
So @piersmorgan hates blind people. No one is shocked. Moving on.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 12, 2013
So @Dloesch wants me to provide ‘statistics’ to support my belief that arming blind people is a bad idea. I can’t. Dana wins. ARM THE BLIND!— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) September 12, 2013
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Exceptional Idiots
by digby
So everyone is bitching about Vladimir Putin having the nerve to question our asinine insistence on American Exceptionalism. Senator Bob Menendez even said his commentary made him want to throw up. (He’s a delicate flower, isn’t he?)
Here’s your exceptionalism, on full display in living color, in a foreign country:
Tea party-backed Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) on Saturday held a press conference in Egypt to thank the country’s military for overthrowing the elected government, and at one point even seemed to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood had been behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
My God. That is so bad that if I were in Egypt I’d be compelled to apologize to every Egyptian I saw on the street for the stunning, over-the-top condescension of these morons.
Jon Stewart handled this the only way possible:
Yeah, we’re “exceptional” all right, although I think most people would call it “special”, which isn’t exactly the same thing.
Watch the whole bizarre “press conference” below — Stewart actually cut out some of the stupidest stuff — and think about the fact that these people are representing you around the world. And then think about why others find our constant chest beating about our own superiority and exceptionalism to be the most absurd thing about us:
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by digby
Grayson has emerged as the most effective anti-war voice in the US House of Representatives:
Rep. Alan Grayson joined Ari Rabin-Havt on The Agenda on SiriusXM Progress early Wednesday morning to reflect on President Obama’s speech to the nation about taking action in Syria, and what he as a Congressman is doing to prevent it.
Rep. Alan Grayson’s website, www.dontattacksyria.com, has received almost 100,000 signatures.
“The forces of peace stood up, shouted, and got heard for once”, Rep. Grayson exclaimed.
“I think that the public is repelled by (the idea that war is for Washington elites to decide). It’s the public’s money and it’s the public’s blood that’s at stake and on the line here.”
There are many things our polarized citizenry disagrees on. But Syrian intervention has a clear bipartisan majority that agrees down the line and for the same reasons. That doesn’t happen very often these days and because Washington is so reflexively partisan if has lost the ability to see it when it does.
Grayson is enemy #1 of conservative pundits everywhere but he is able to sneak behind enemy lines and speak to the people (and his conservative political colleagues) in a common language. It’s a powerful ability which few politicians have. Bill Clinton comes to mind.
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More trouble in GOP paradise
by David Atkins
The declining reputation of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks is remarkable:
A House GOP leadership team whose best-laid plans have been continually torpedoed by Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth has a familiar ally as it tries to avert a government shutdown: Grover Norquist.
It’s not hard to find frustration with Heritage Action and the Club for Growth among senior Republicans, who believe the groups’ demand that they include Obamacare defunding language on any spending bill keeping the government open will ultimately empower Democrats in a series of fall battles over spending. They believe it’s part of a pattern of pushing untenable demands that have no chance of becoming law.
“Heritage Action and Club for Growth are slowly becoming irrelevant Neanderthals,” one senior GOP aide said.
“Heritage is working harder to elect Democrats than the DCCC,” another senior GOP aide said, referring to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “And those efforts to defeat Republicans are marginalizing them and destroying the reputation of the institution built by Ed Feulner and once revered by all conservative members.”
A band of conservatives, with Heritage Action and Club for Growth cheering them on, forced leadership Wednesday to delay consideration of the continuing resolution until next week. The strategy from House leadership would give Republicans a chance to tell their constituents they voted to defund Obamacare and blame the Senate for saving it. But it’s a far cry from the shutdown showdown the defund die-hards are demanding.
There was a time when progressives greatly feared and wanted to emulate Heritage and Club for Growth. Their model worked well for a long time, but they’ve become victims of their own success.
The entire Republican Party has tilted so far right that the weight of these organizations is causing the entire right wing to capsize. Quite literally the only thing protecting Republicans from the consequences at this point is gerrymandering and corruption.
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Your moment of zen, Pet Goat edition
by digby
Andrew Card said, “Mr President, the nation is under attack”
I never noticed that he even keeps interacting and chatting with the students after Card told him.
I will never understand this reaction.
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The Most Serious of the Very Serious, back in the saddle #Kissingerzombie
by digby
Meteor Blades at Dkos has this flabbergasting bit of news:
The other September 11 is 40 years old. Joyce Horman thanks those who sought justice in Chile—one key person responsible for the torture, exile and death of so many Chileans after the coup of Sept. 11, 1973 still roams our country at large.
In 1971, that guy was National Security Adviser when a Navy Lt. j.g. John Kerry testified before Congress on the war in Vietnam, providing a report on the Winter Soldier Investigation. That guy’s boss, Richard Nixon, targeted Kerry, sicking Charles Colson on him. It was Colson who found John O’Neill, who three decades later co-founded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which savagely attacked Kerry during his run for the presidency.
Today, that guy in the photo who denied his role in the Chilean coup and subsequent slaughter and repression, that guy who served two presidents as Secretary of State, is going to advise Secretary of State John Kerry on the Syrian situation.
I guess that makes sense when you think about it. They are probably trying to get into Assad’s head and who better than a war criminal? After all, Dick Cheney and John Yoo aren’t going to volunteer.
There really is nothing these people can do to lose their status, is there?
Update: Speaking of “experts”, remember that Very Serious Person Kerry and McCain wereciting all over the place last week who insisted in the the Syrian rebels are mostly moderates who later turned out to be a paid shill? Oopsie:
[W]hile Kerry spoke before Congress about O’Bagy’s “enormous” experience covering Syria, Janine Di Giovanni, a veteran foreign correspondent who has reported on the ground there, suggested that the young researcher had “exaggerated wildly her experience inside Syria.”
Di Giovanni told HuffPost that she’s sure O’Bagy has read on Syrian history and the Assad family and that she’s had some on-the-ground experience, “but not what she led Kerry and others to believe.”
“Those of us who work in Syria, as reporters or researchers, are a very small group of people,” di Giovanni said. “We’re all incredibly cautious. We’re all protective of each other. It’s a very difficult job and difficult war to work in. It’s not a war to cut your teeth in. A lot of people were quite shocked when a 26-year-old Ph.D, so-called Syria expert who appeared to have never worked in the region, and whom no one had heard of, appeared on CNN and other networks as a Syrian expert.”
She was fired today for lying about her PhD. She doesn’t have one.
Update: Hah. Just saw that Atrios and I are on the same wavelength. Not for the first time …