Month: July 2014

Meanwhile, over there

by digby

You have to wonder if this is for real:

Residents of a town north of Baghdad found 12 corpses with execution-style bullet wounds on Monday, after fighting between rival Sunni insurgent groups that could eventually unravel the coalition that seized much of the north and west of the country.

The incident points to an intensification of infighting between the Islamic State and other Sunni groups, such as supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which rallied behind the al Qaeda offshoot last month because of shared hatred for the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

Police in Muqdadiya, a town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, said residents from the nearby town of Saadiya found the 12 corpses on Monday after intense fighting overnight between Islamic State fighters and the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by Saddam allies.

Since the Islamic State swept through Iraqi cities and proclaimed its leader caliph of all Muslims last month, there have been increasing signs of conflict with other Sunni groups who do not necessarily share the al Qaeda offshoot’s rejection of Iraq’s borders or its severe interpretation of Islam.

Washington, which recruited other Sunni fighters to defeat al Qaeda during the U.S. surge offensive in 2006-2007, hopes other Sunnis will again turn against the Islamic State and can be lured back into a power-sharing government in Baghdad.

So, are we to assume that Washington might see this as good news? Or are we just talking about chaos/fog of war that adds up to more killing? It’s very hard to tell from the article.

According to Dick Cheney, the Bush administration left Iraq in tip-top shape and it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket because Obama is the anti-Christ. (Actually Obama would agree to some extent that he “failed” because, try as he might, he wasn’t able to persuade the Maliki Government to deep-six the Bush-Cheney status of forces agreement which called for a total pull-out…)In any case the “who lost Iraq” argument is being fully engaged and if earlier “who lost…?” debates are a guide we’re not going to see it resolved any time soon.

Meanwhile, the death and destruction continues. Cheney’s convenient historical revision notwithstanding, we can probably all agree that the likelihood of this happening without the US invasion is nil. We broke it and we paid for it, but it’s well and truly shattered.

.

The lawsuit long game

by digby

My piece in Salon today talks about all the reasons John Boehner and Co might think suing the president is a good idea.  There’s merit in all of them — he could be heading off impeachment talk although I can’t say he’ll necessarily succeed there.  And it’s probably that they truly do want to change the constitutional system so that the judicial branch has even more power than it has already.

But I think it’s all in service of their agenda. They are very practical about getting their way whether it’s from the majority or the minority:

But there may be even more to this than simply empowering the Supreme Court (with its comparatively youthful conservative majority.) We know that the demographic changes in the electorate mean the Republicans are looking at a very difficult future in terms of national elections unless they are able to tame the radical beast they’ve created. Barring unforeseen circumstances, it is highly unlikely they will be able to win the presidency any time soon. But it’s very possible that with their gerrymandered districts they could keep the House for some time to come and the undemocratic nature of the Senate insures that it can always be up for grabs.

And all of that is despite a Democratic national majority. After all, obstructing the federal government’s ability to enact new programs and fund the ones that still exist while narrowing the executive branch’s ability to act in domestic matters is the GOP agenda. And the fact is that it can be perfectly realized as a minority party. If they can put this last step in place — having their conservative Supreme Court majority “arbitrate” on behalf of the Republicans in congress — they could be in the driver’s seat for some time to come. Whether the people like it or not.

By any means necessary …

Libertarian plutocrats still have to govern. They just don’t want to.

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent takes a look at the GOP’s infrastructure investment problem and makes a great point. The anti-government GOP still has to perform the basic functions of governance, and that’s increasingly a challenge in the extreme Objectivist eddy that calls government spending “dependency spending”:

The looming battle over infrastructure — particularly in the short term, over the fate of the Highway Trust Fund — could provide a particularly stark example of GOP anti-government sentiment colliding with reality.

The Highway Trust Fund is expected to go insolvent later this summer, and the White House has warned that such an outcome could stall countless infrastructure projects across the country and cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

In general, infrastructure spending is broadly popular, even among Republican voters. But GOP lawmakers have managed to oppose various White House infrastructure spending initiatives by tying them up in disputes over how to pay for them. Yet that could prove tougher to pull off in the case of the Highway Trust Fund, because there could be numerous examples of projects grinding to a halt in GOP districts.

…

It’s easy for a far right candidate like David Brat (who overthrew Eric Cantor) to throw around anti-government bluster about how he’s going to jail crony capitalists. It’s also not all that hard for Republican lawmakers to attack the Export-Import Bank as improper government meddling in the economy, since few voters know or care about it. But the battle over infrastructure spending could pose a much tougher test when it comes to the limits of GOP anti-government rhetoric.

It’s just another reminder that Republicans aren’t really “conservative” anymore. These are radical economic libertarian ideologues as wild-eyed and unrealistic about human nature and economics as any Bolshevik. What they want is a society that has never existed before in modern history, testing an already-discredited economic theory that has never been pursued to its full extent because it’s too demonstrably crazy, with social order enforced by a code of morality and institutional hierarchy most voters have already rejected.

That’s why American politics is so impossible right now. These are not traditional disagreements over this program or that, or the size and scope of this effort or that one. Modern Republicans aren’t conservatives so much as revolutionary revanchists, seeking to “take back their country” by creating a libertarian economic utopia such as has never existed (nor, due to its internal unworkability, will it ever exist) in the world. The left can point to other countries that work reasonably well along the lines we would prefer: we can point to Canada, Germany, Sweden and many other countries besides whose solutions to vexing American policy problems have worked out substantially well for them. Republicans cannot point to similar examples because they do not exist.

That can be an admirable thing if you’re trying to found the world’s first modern democracy. It’s not so admirable if you’re trying to found the world’s first libertarian plutocracy. But either way, it’s not conservative. And the left can’t just come to “bipartisan agreement” with that sort of thing.

.

Rand’s lonely dance

by digby

I like Ed Kilgore’s take on Rand Paul’s return salvo to Rick Perry’s lame attack op-ed:

[I]t showed his three-pronged strategy for dealing with the “isolationist” attacks he will continue to attract: (1) challenging GOP hawks for the mantle of St. Ronald Reagan; (2) pointing to polls showing the extreme unpopularity of warmongering, thus making foreign policy an “electability” issue; and (3) denying the whole premise that he’s that different from other Republicans, in part by talking tough on national security issues that don’t involve military interventions.

Paul’s gotten pretty good at turning what would seem to be “isolationist” positions into emblems of truculence, viz. his makeover of a long-time proposal to cut off assistance to the Palestinian Authority into a “Stand With Israel” posture. But for eons Republicans have ultimately measured their presidential candidates’ acceptability on foreign policy and national security in terms of their willingness either to kill foreigners or spend more money, if not both. No matter how much he dresses up his old man’s non-interventionism in camo patterns and how loudly he plays martial music, so long as Rand Paul opposes every opportunity to kill foreigners while calling for lower defense spending, the “isolationist” label will be a problem for him, as the ghosts of both the Cold War and the War On Terror haunt him. I suspect opponents more skillful than Rick Perry will at some point make that plain.

I know there’s a lot of optimism that Paul is going to turn the GOP into the Party of doves but honestly, I think there’s not a snowballs chance in Vegas of that happening. The hyper-patriot, martial, blood ‘n guts strain is so dominant in the Republican Party that this change would require a political earthquake far greater than a quixotic Rand Paul presidential run. It would be a good thing for the nation to have non-interventionist/pacifist types in congress to temper the overwhelming power of the American Deep State, but the Republican caucus is hardly the most auspicious place to start.

Just a little reminder about the Iraq war:

Granted, both parties are at least half full of people who would vote for any war no matter how stupid. But one of them is pretty much unanimous on the subject every time it comes up. And it isn’t the Democrats. My point being that if you are trying to build strength for the anti-war position, why start with the Party that only has a small handful of true anti-war members (at best) when the other party actually has quite a few who will often not only oppose war for partisan reasons but stand on principle? Rand Paul, while being someone that can certainly provide some bipartisan support within the Senate on discrete issues, is facing a major headwind if he’s supposed to become president and lead his party away from its philosophical and cultural attachment to authoritarianism and war. In fact, I’d guess it’s going to take another major realignment that switches red to blue and vice versa.  Does anyone see that happening anytime soon?

.

The cult of the absolutes


by digby

This piece in the Daily Beast makes the case that the Tea Party isn’t a political group at all but rather a religion:

While a traditional political party may have a line that it won’t cross,the Tea Party has a stone-engraved set of principles, all of which are sacrosanct. This is not a political platform to be negotiated but a catechism with only a single answer. It is now a commonplace for Tea Party candidates to vow they won’t sacrifice an iota of their principles. In this light, shutting down the Government rather than bending on legislation becomes a moral imperative. While critics may decry such a tactic as “rule or ruin,” Tea Party brethren celebrate it, rather, as the act of a defiant Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple. For them, this is not demolition but reclamation, cleansing the sanctuary that has been profaned by liberals. They see themselves engaged in nothing less than a project of national salvation. The refusal to compromise is a watchword of their candidates who wear it as a badge of pride. This would seem disastrous in the give-and-take of politics but it is in keeping with sectarian religious doctrine. One doesn’t compromise on an article of faith.

This explains why the Tea Party faithful often appear to be so bellicose. You and I can have a reasonable disagreement about fiscal policy or foreign policy but if I attack your religious beliefs you will become understandably outraged. And if I challenge the credibility of your doctrine you will respond with righteous indignation. To question the validity of Moses parting the Red Sea or the Virgin Birth or Mohammed ascending to heaven on a flying horse is to confront the basis of a believer’s deepest values.

Consequently, on the issues of government, economics, race, and sex, the Tea Party promulgates a doctrine to which the faithful must subscribe. Democrats and independents who oppose their dogma are infidels. Republicans who don’t obey all the tenants are heretics, who are primaried rather than burned at the stake.

Just don’t call them the Taliban …

I do think the fact that so many of them are also members of the Christian Right may have something to do with this. It’s a mode of thinking — a belief in revealed truth (in this case by Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh …)If you are the type to believe in the literal word of the Bible (at least to the extent that it reinforces your prejudices) it makes sense that you’d be attracted to a similarly absolutist political worldview as well.  Just like those other guys …

.

Jesus was a Randroid? Who knew?

by digby

Or maybe John Galt was Jesus?

Eighty percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said Jesus would support universal healthcare. Indeed it’s hard to imagine Jesus would deny care to those who lack the financial means to enjoy the comfort of our for-profit capitalist healthcare industry. But that’s not the Jesus Republicans know. Only 23 percent of Republicans believe Jesus would support healthcare for all.

.

Check your state secret privilege

by digby

Back when he was a big civil libertarian, open government kind of guy, the president used to say some really good stuff:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama hammered George W. Bush for expanding government secrecy. Obama promised that his would be the most transparent and open administration ever. In particular, Obama criticized the Bush administration’s use of a legal loophole known as the state secrets privilege. Citing this privilege, government lawyers can keep evidence and testimony from being introduced in court that would reveal government secrets. That means that if someone sues the government for wrongdoing—say, a plaintiff claims that he or she was illegally spied on or tortured at the behest of the US government—the Justice Department can claim key pieces of evidence will expose national security secrets and prevent this material from being used in court. Doing so would hinder or outright squash the person’s case.

In 2008, Obama griped that the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege “more than any other previous administration” and used it to get entire lawsuits thrown out of court. Critics noted that deploying the state secrets privilege allowed the Bush administration to shut down cases that might have revealed government misconduct or caused embarrassment, including those regarding constitutionally dubious warrantless wiretapping and the CIA’s kidnapping and torture of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman the government had mistaken for an alleged Al Qaeda leader with the same name. After Obama took office, his attorney general, Eric Holder, promised to significantly limit the use of this controversial legal doctrine. Holder vowed never to use it to “conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government.”

Guess what?

Despite this promise, Obama continued to assert the privilege to squelch cases about Bush-era abuses. In one instance, the Justice Department scuttled a lawsuit brought by a man who claimed he had been kidnapped by the CIA and had his penis and testicles cut with a scalpel in a Moroccan prison. And now Obama is broadening the use of this legal maneuver: In the past 18 months, the Obama administration has twice cited state secrets to prevent federal courts from considering lawsuits challenging its use of the no-fly list.

Just consider the scope of those two cases. One is a situation where a man ha his genitals cut with a scalpel after he was “rendered” to Morocco by the CIA. The other is someone wanting to know on what basis they have been flagged by the TSA as a threat. From inconvenience to torture, the government says it’s all one big secret. And there’s nothing you can do about it … because it’s a secret, it can’t be litigated through a normal legal process.

Most people who believe the government has to do this argue that because the threat is so dire we must be willing to so this in order to keep the babies safe. Setting aside the valid retort that we are actually making the world less safe with all this paranoia and by feeding into the mythos of the extremists, how can we explain the fact that the same government agencies that are continuously sounding the shrill threat siren turned out to have been lying through their teeth about the extent of the Cold War threat in order to advance their own agenda? I suppose it might be different this time. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Update: This is becoming absurd:

President Obama is “absolutely” the most transparent president in history, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Sunday after the White House received a letter from signed by a dozen top journalists’ groups complaining about the administration’s policies toward the media.

“There are a number of steps that we’ve taken to give people greater insight into what’s happening at the White House,” Earnest said in an interview with CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

The letter, signed by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Poynter Institute, among others, accuses the White House of “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.”

It asks the president to create an ombudsman charged with enforcing his goal of government transparency, and asks Obama “issue a clear directive telling federal employees they’re not only free to answer questions from reporters and the public, but actually encouraged to do so.”

“We believe that is one of the most important things you can do for the nation now, before the policies become even more entrenched,” the letter says.

Press Secretary Earnest (a perfect Dickensian name if there ever was one) explained that this simply isn’t an issue no matter what these people think. The Obama administration is the most open and transparent in history because it tells reporters where the president goes for fundraisers and who visits the White House. What more could they possibly need?

.

The statehouses have never been more important

by David Atkins

Yesterday at Washington Monthly I noted the increased importance of the “laboratories of democracy” in an era when federal action to solve problems is becoming nearly impossible:

The 113th Congress seems set to pass fewer laws than any in recent history, almost entirely due to total obstruction by the Republican House. That, of course, reduces the opportunities to solve problems at the federal level. But the gridlock also reduces the ability of political parties to provide contrasts to their voters, particularly when the journalistic establishment tends to gloss over the reasons for Congressional dysfunction and the issues involved, preferring to simply throw a pox on both houses for failing to overcome “partisan disagreement.”

That dynamic means that it has never been more important for both Republicans and Democrats to enact desired policy changes at a state-by-state level. Politically, that also allows the parties point to the states they control as beacons of success, assuming their policies demonstrate positive outcomes.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that control of state legislatures has dramatic impact on Congress in redistricting battles.

…

In California the Democratic Party took control of the statehouse with 2/3 supermajorities in the Assembly and Senate in 2012, as well as every state constitutional office. In one fell swoop, years of poor economic and budget news turned almost instantly rosy as Democrats came together to pass competent budgets and fund needed priorities. By discarding Republican obstruction Democrats were able to turn California from a national laughingstock into a nearly overnight success story.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s success in marijuana legalization is serving as a model for states across the nation to question their own laws on the topic.

As long as current Congressional district boundaries remain in place, the House is going to be a difficult place to get anything done. The Senate may well bounce back and forth between the 2014 and 2016 elections, possibly even 2018 as well. Legislative gridlock seems a near certainty until at least 2020 if not 2022 when the new census establishes new partisan district lines.

Democrats and their donors would be well advised to shift a substantial amount of their focus to winning statehouse battles, helping people in the states where it’s possible to help, and proving the worth of progressive policies to serve as an example for voters in the battlegrounds.

This won’t always be the case. Next decade the Congress will be the pivotal battleground. But for the next six to eight years at least, control of legislatures is equally important if not more so.

.

Solitary cruelty

by digby

There’s nothing cruel and unusual about this at all:

Elliott “Bud” Yorke, who is incarcerated at Florida’s Columbia Correctional Institution Annex at Lake City, was sent to solitary confinement on June 24. According to prison officials, he was placed in isolation for his own protection after corrections officers observed injuries suggesting that he had been assaulted. Aside from being two months shy of his 90th birthday, Yorke is deaf and non-verbal, communicating primarily through writing. He uses a wheeled walker to move around.

They took away his walker too …

.

Fergawdsakes

by digby

Seriously:

Concrete evidence has shown up proving our earlier assertion: The breach of our border by waves of unaccompanied alien children was orchestrated by the administration based on a strategy straight out of the playbook President Obama studied as a community organizer. His goal is to get his way on immigration reform by overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol and collapsing an already weakened system.

Oh my God! What’s the scoop?

The evidence comes in the form a government contract solicited in January by the Department of Homeland Security. The listing asked for “Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children” in expectation of the arrival of 65,000 minors on our southern border without their parents or guardians.

The operative language in the listing is the statement by DHS/Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they expect there “will be approximately 65,000” alien minors requiring assistance. This is a significant increase from the 5,000 minors who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement annually. It also strongly suggests not only advance knowledge of the human catastrophe about to unfold but a lack of any effort to stop it.

I don’t know why this shows a lack of effort to stop it, but I guess it just does.

Here’s a little factoid they didn’t bother to look at: The surge started in October. So, the January date wasn’t “in anticipation” of the surge, it was right in the middle of it.

I suppose these anti-immigrant assholes think the government should have just thrown up its hands and let the kids starve and die. Because freedom and liberty.