Month: February 2015

The new civility, surly old man edition

by digby

I don’t know how I missed this but it’s apalling, on a number of different levels:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that he will not apologize for calling protesters “low-life scum” at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this week.

“I think they’re terrible people,” McCain said of Code Pink, the women-led grassroots peace and social justice group that protested the hearing, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

McCain, the chairman of the committee, became particularly enraged when a member of the group dangled handcuffs over Kissinger’s head. “You’re gonna have to shut up or I’m going to have you arrested,” McCain said at the hearing. “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

The Arizona Republican said Sunday that he stands by his comments because the protesters went beyond the bounds of constitutional free speech.

“I think they’re terrible people that would do that to a 91-year old man with a broken shoulder, to physically threaten him,” McCain said. “That is beyond any normal behavior I have ever observed.”

“I’m used to people popping up at these these hearings and yelling, and they’re escorted out — that’s at least some version of free speech,” he added. “These people rushed up, they were right next to him, waving handcuffs. He’s a 91-year old man with a broken shoulder who was willing to come down and testify before Congress to give us the benefit of his many years of wisdom.”

Who is the frail old man he’s talking about? A WWII veteran perhaps? An elderly inventor of an important code-breaking device? No. It was Henry Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger, the man who has fingerprints all over every foreign policy disaster of the last half century, including Iraq:

From the new Wikileaks release “The Kissinger cables”:

“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

This seems like a good day to remind everyone of this little discussed tid-bit from Bob Woodward’s State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III:

A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush’s Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.

“Of the outside people that I talk to in this job,” Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him.”

The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.

Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.

In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.

It’s the anti-war protesters who are the “low life scum”?

And no they didn’t threaten him. They held up signs behind him and chanted. I’m sure it was unpleasant to be publicly called a war criminal.  Not as unpleasant as being bombed, tortured and “disappeared” but unpleasant nonetheless:

If that’s the only punishment he receives for his deeds over the past 50 years, he’s one very lucky man indeed.

Lethal snowballs?

by digby

From Amato at Crooks and Liars

Talk of the Sound has obtained copies of two video clips posted on social media that appear to show a New Rochelle Police office draw his firearm and aim to at a youth kneeling in the snow after police responded to calls of a disturbance which one witness described as a snow ball fight.

h/t the video was posted on social media by @WattsWorld, sent to Talk of the Sound by @_KingMalcolm

The first video picks up the action in the middle of things so it is not clear from the video what transpired beforehand. The video shows an NRPD officer using obscene language, ordering the already-kneeling youths to remain down. The officer is holding his firearm with both hands, pointed directly at one of the youths. He then approaches the young man, briefly frisks him with one hand while holding onto his firearm.

The second video clip shows police telling the youths to get up and move along.

New Rochelle City officials did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

It’s possible that the cops had been told the kids were armed by the dispatcher. There may be more to the story than what we see in the video. But if it is what it appears to be, you have to wonder if this was really the smartest way to handle the situation. Any time they pull out their guns and point them at people the situation escalates to a potentially lethal one.

The swearing at suspects has got to stop, by the way. I’m not a member of the language police and I’m anything but offended by it in friendly personal talk, but I think it’s unprofessional and raises the volume of these incidents. Cops are being filmed now and they should know that they aren’t just saying this stuff to the alleged criminal snowball throwers. They’re saying it to the general public and it makes them look like thuggish amateurs. If they want respect from the public they need to sound like respectful adults who are in control.

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When in doubt, hit somebody
by Tom Sullivan

The Times editorial board paid closer attention than I did to Obama’s State of the Union speech:

They went largely unnoticed, four words President Obama ad-libbed during the State of the Union address last month as he asked lawmakers to provide legal cover for America’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

“We need that authority,” the president said, adding a line to the prepared remarks on his teleprompter that seemed to acknowledge a reality about which his administration has been inexcusably dishonest.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure” goes the old saying. That applies to legislating as well. The PATRIOT Act, for one. In this case, passage on September 14, 2001 of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), signed on September 18 by President George W. Bush. Specifically:

Section 2 – Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Obama now wants to use the AUMF to retroactively justify bombing Syria over a decade later. Congress will likely go along. The Times is not amused:

By failing to replace the sweeping war authorizations Congress established for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, with a far narrower mandate, lawmakers are abdicating one of their most consequential constitutional powers: the authority to declare war. White House officials maintain that the current campaign in Iraq and Syria is legal under the Afghan and Iraq war resolutions, a dubious argument considering those were tailored to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks and to deal with Saddam Hussein, then the Iraqi leader, on the grounds — since proved to be false — that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Obama called on Congress in 2013 to “refine, and ultimately repeal” the Bush AUMF and vowed himself not to expand it lest we “grant Presidents unbound powers” (to wage war on their say so). Now, Obama and the usual suspects want Congress to draft a new AUMF against ISIL. Because when in doubt, hit somebody. And because we have so many places to hit them from.

In 2008, the Pentagon claimed “545,000 facilities at 5,300 sites in the U.S. and around the globe.” What counts as a facility? Or a site? How many of those are overseas? In 2009, Anita Dancs with the Institute for Policy Studies estimated about 865 bases overseas, at an annual cost of $250 billion. (What counts as overseas is a matter of interpretation.) Ron Paul caught flack in 2011 for saying 900.

Trouble is, the Pentagon can’t even give you an accurate count of what the empire administers, as Nick Turse found about the same time:

There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

But you can trust them. That global footprint is justified. Just what the Founders imagined. If we can’t find enough enemies to justify those bases, new enemies can be arranged, and new legal justifications for attacking them.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Bread and circuses for everyone.

Superbowl super goodies

by digby

It’s Saturday and I’m fried.

So here is a recipe for tomorrow for anyone who is going to a party and wants to bring something good. These are super easy and super delicious:

Salted fudge brownies

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 9-inch square metal cake pan with foil, draping the foil over the edges. Lightly butter the foil.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter with the unsweetened chocolate over very low heat (Or in microwave on 50% power for 30 second intervals, stirring between each one until chocolate is melted). Remove from the heat. Whisking them in one at a time until thoroughly incorporated, add the cocoa, sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Sprinkle the salt evenly over the batter. Using a butter knife, swirl the salt into the batter.

Bake the fudge brownies in the center of the oven for about 35 minutes, until the edge is set but the center is still a bit soft and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out coated with a little of the batter. Let the brownies cool at room temperature in the pan for 1 hour, then refrigerate just until they are firm, about 1 hour. Lift the brownies from the pan and peel off the foil. Cut the brownies into 16 squares. Serve at room temperature.

Oh what the heck — this is Super good for Superbowl too:

Sloppy Joe dip

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef chuck
1 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
11/2 cups canned chopped tomatoes with their juice
1/4 cup ketchup
11/2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds

Salt and freshly ground pepper
Tortilla chips and sour cream, for serving

In a large skillet, heat the oil. Add the meat, breaking it up with a spoon, and cook over high heat until browned, about 7 minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the jalapeño and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce and celery seeds. Cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer the dip to a bowl and serve hot with tortilla chips and sour cream.

Bon Appetit!

(And may the best west coast team win …;)

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