Month: March 2015

Rating the munchkins

by digby

Grover Norquist says the GOP has a big field of serious candidates:

In no particular order, Norquist says the credible field of GOP hopefuls is made up of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

“We have six guys who are either on stage already, or half a step offstage who can and will step on stage and can’t be pushed off the stage, can’t be mau-maued off the stage. They can falter, they could melt, they could decide to walk off the stage themselves, but they can’t be pushed off,” Norquist said. “These guys have enough name ID and can raise enough money to stay all the way and be credible.”

Notably absent from his shortlist are senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. He predicts both will struggle to build a national support base while they battle for funding against Perry and Bush, both better known in their home states.

“I think the six is pretty set,” he said. “There will always be one or two surprises, but that is a very different situation than two and six years ago when there were two or three serious challengers and everybody else – I don’t mean to be unkind – but they were munchkins. They were never going to become national figures. They each got their 15 minutes of fame, but you couldn’t take that two weeks of attention – Herman Cain, [Newt] Gingrich, the lady from Minnesota [Rep. Michelle Bachman], and turn that into a campaign.”

I don’t know why he excludes Rubio . He certainly isn’t a munchkin like Bachman. He did very well at the Koch primary. And today he came out with this:

On Wednesday, Rubio and Utah Sen. Mike Lee unveiled the blueprint for their long-awaited tax reform plan, which would cut taxes for individuals, families, businesses, and investors while eliminating a swath of deductions. Individual tax rates would be compressed into two brackets of 15% and 35% while the top corporate tax rate would shrink to 25% from 35%. The centerpiece of the plan, and a potential model for GOP policy in the age of stagnant wages, is a pricey new $2,500-per-child tax credit. It will undoubtedly play a central part in a Rubio presidential campaign should the Florida lawmaker take the plunge.

“No matter what I run for, whether it’s the Senate or presidency, of course this is going to be part of our platform,” Rubio said. “You think I’m going to come up with a second tax plan?”

Sounds like a Grover wet dream.

And really, Cruz is a weirdo but he isn’t a munchkin. He’s got a sizeable following in the party and speaks for a lot of them.  Sure, he might not be able to win the general but it’s a stretch to think Bobby Jindal or Rick Perry could either … And Rand Paul’s following is arguably much smaller than Cruz’s.

You’ll notice he left out the guy who keeps coming in 2nd in all the straw polls: Ben Carson.

.

Process server

by digby

ICYWW, this is how the White House explained the email rules and procedures today:

Press Sec Josh Earnest: What we have said about senior officials or even officials at a lower level who use their personal email to conduct their personal business, is that it’s important to insure that when official business is conducted on personal email that those records are properly maintained and preserved. The easiest way to do that is to simply take your personal email and forward it to your government email where it can be archived with your other official correspondence.

But there are also procedures that have been set up by some agencies, including the department of state, where individuals can essentially print out personal emails that relate to the conduct of official government business and ensure they are properly maintained and preserved in that way. And again it’s important that these emails are properly maintained and preserved so they can be used to respond to legitimate inquiries from the public, legitimate inquiries from the congress or even legitimate inquiries from historians down the line.

Now I understand that hundreds of these documents have been produced to congress in conjunction with a legitimate congressional inquiry and that is again the way this process is supposed to work.

Reporter: Can you understand the concern that if a cabinet level official is not only using a private email and their own server that there really is no independent way to verify that they have turned over all the emails that involve official business?

Ernest: All I can say  is that the guidelines that we have laid out are consistent with the law the president signed into law at the end of last year, which is to establish clear guidelines for how we can insure that work that’s done on a personal email account is properly maintained.  This is also why the guidance that we have given to administration staffers is that they should save themselves this additional step and do their official government business on their official government email.  That is the path that the vast majority of administration staffers use.  I put myself in that category.

If there are occasions in which there happen to be an email exchange on ones personal email account that is relevant to their official responsibilities it’s important for them to remember to forward their email to their official government account so it can be properly preserved.

Who do you think decides which personal emails will be forwarded under the rules set forth by the administration and law the president signed? No, there are no professional government archivists who come along and inspect personal emails to determine which ones to send.   It seems that the person who sent the email is the one who determines which ones are archived and which ones aren’t.

The Bush administration official just deleted all theirs which undoubtedly solved a lot of problems. Perhaps Clinton should have followed in their footsteps.

Now maybe there should be a rule that nobody can ever use their private email for any official business ever.   But it would appear by all accounts that the rules allow people to use their private emails for official business and only stipulate that they forward these emails to the government archive either by ccing their government email account or printing out hard copies. And there is no provision for anyone to “check” and make sure they have done it. (But then they can always check with the NSA’s dragnet files, amirite?)

From the sound of the media today, the idea congealing is that the congress and presumably others shoud have the right to go through all emails, personal and private, of anyone subject to an investigation to determine whether or not they are lying about what is relevant to official business.  This would be a big break from what we normally call the subpoena process which requires that someone turn over all documents pertaining to a particular matter. They don’t employ a group of government officials or private detectives to go on a fishing expedition and comb through all the documents the person has to determine if they’ve complied with the request either.  They require the person themselves to determine what is pertinent to the request and produce them. 


This is what happened with the Benghazi request that was the basis of the leak to the NY Times.  But as with all these feeding frenzies, the media doesn’t know what it’s talking about.  I just watched Thomas Roberts on MSNBC going on and on about transparency and how this sort of document production for a congressional request was tainted by the fact that  the person who was required to produce the documents produced them and so we can’t know if they are lying. Transparency, openness etc, with the implication that somehow this is a big break with normal procedures. Oy, it gives you a headache.

This report from Medium.com raises some issues not raised in any other reporting as far as I can tell, pointing out that the government email system has been repeatedly hacked and highly confidential State Department communications were also famously leaked by Wikileaks, so keeping the emails on a secure private server may have made more sense from a security standpoint. Maybe that’s not the case.

Alex Seitz-Wald of MSNBC did inform us that this is a Big Problem for Clinton even though there’s nothing illegal because ….

It speaks to a larger narrative going all the way back to Whitewater and the first Clinton White House when Hillary Clinton resisted providing documents, it fits into this idea that she’s “calculating” and “Machiavellian”. You can be sure that Republicans are going to keep advancing that narrative.

And the press will lead the parade for them like a bunch of tumbling, cheerleaders:

One of the best practitioners of the political dark arts used to refer to the kind of story that appeared yesterday about Hillary Clinton using a personal e-mail account instead of an official one while at the State Department as a “Picasso.” By that, he meant a masterpiece of his craft: placing, without fingerprints, negative stories that wind up on the front pages of a major newspaper and command the political news cycle for a few days. These stories are often months in the making and, at best, reinforce or create a new negative narrative about the target. So it is with this latest story on Clinton and e-mails. For Clinton-haters and skeptics, it underscores a pattern of deception and rule-breaking and threatens to become a chronic annoyance for her eventual candidacy. What e-mails are missing? What’s in them? A congressional investigation, anyone?

There’s another interesting wrinkle to this story for those who follow the game within the game of political campaigns. Who might have been the source of the story? Which master of the craft of opposition research? Well, I don’t know, but you don’t have to be an expert in forensics to suspect the campaign of Jeb Bush. Bush, after all, released all of his e-mails from his years as governor of Florida, which seems less curious now. And his campaign communications director, Tim Miller, perhaps the best in the Republican Party, is the former head of the factory of Clinton opposition research, America Rising. If that’s the case, the story could be a signal that Bush’s campaign knows how to throw a fastball up and in.

Oooh baby.

By the way, the reference to Whitewater by Seitz-Walz offered up as a matter of historical fact forgot to include the important detail that Whitewater was a fraud perpetrated by the right wing and gleefully flogged by an eager press corps. But whatever … “it’s out there.”

*I am going to issue the standard disclaimer that if Clinton did something real bring it on.  But this is a patented pseudo-scandal planted by the Benghazi bullshit squad and I’m not jumping on the bandwagon.
If somebody wants to do an expose of Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street, her hawkish foreign policy or her penchant for nonsensical bipartisan cant, that’s perfectly fair.  In fact, it’s necessary. I think a hardcore investigation into the Clinton Foundation and all its opaque financial dealings is absolutely in bounds. But when they start recycling rightwing Benghazi crapola, referencing Whitewater,talking about her “calculating Machiavellian character”  and don’t even have a clue about what it is she’s supposed to have done wrong, just that it doesn’t “pass the smell test”, I’m going to be ornery. This is the Village in all its glory and I’m sad to say that a new generation of Villagers is just as willing to chase the shiny object for the Dark Ops wingnuts as their forebears.

.

Can Republicans exceed George W. Bush’s minority vote?

by digby

I have a piece up at Salon today talking about a new report that has to have the smarter of Republican strategists very nervous:

[D]espite the fact that the new CPAC organizers encouraged a slightly less fringy tone, they were unable to do anything about the fringy policies. Even the Great Whitebread Hope, Scott Walker (who, predictably, committed yet another embarrassing gaffe), reversed his position on immigration reform. He was for it before he was against it. And needless to say, the legislative game of chicken the House of Representatives was playing in the background over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security proved that the Tea Party wing of the GOP isn’t dead yet. Until the establishment is able to put a stake through its zombie heart, they have a big problem on their hands.

One little discussed CPAC panel on demographics discussed a new bipartisan report which reveals a daunting statistic that will make it very, very difficult for Scott Walker or any other anti-immigration Republican to win the White House in 2016. Ariel Edwards-Levy at Huffington Post reported:

“The fundamental challenge for my side is the seemingly inexorable change in the composition of presidential electorates,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres, whose clients include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said during a panel discussing the report. “And there’s no reason to believe that that’s going to stop magically.” 

The demographic change poses little problem for the GOP in midterm elections, when young and minority voters are far more likely than older, white voters to stay home. But in the run-up to 2016, the demographic trend has some Republicans citing a need for change.
In 2004, Republicans’ most recent presidential victory, George W. Bush won 58 percent of the white vote, and 26 percent of the non-white vote — numbers that would lose him the White House today, Ayres said. 

‘”That’s the stunning part for me in running these numbers — to realize that the last Republican to win a presidential election, who reached out very aggressively to minorities, and did better than any Republican nominee before or since among minorities, still didn’t achieve enough of both of those groups in order to put together a winning percentage” for 2016, Ayres said.

George W. Bush did better than any Republican has ever done with racial minorities. He reached out, he spoke Spanish, he had a long-term reputation for being moderate on these issues. He came from a border state and had a cultural affinity with Latinos. When he ran in 2000 the U.S. was in the midst of an unprecedented economic boom and conservatives had temporarily put the xenophobic genie back in the bottle. He just was not widely seen as a bigot of the old style. In any case, the GOP had made great efforts to try to get at least some minorities on board and Bush was successful in attracting about 25 percent of them. That would not be enough for any GOP candidate to win the presidency in 2016.

And that would seem to spell almost certain doom. read on …

Obviously, anything could happen. Maybe the Democrats will end up nominating someone like Jim Webb and depress turnout among the younger, more female, racially diverse coalition that they need to win. Or an external event could throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.

But all things being equal, Republicans are going to have a very tough time winning the presidency unless they figure out a way not to sound like total cretins toward racial minorities and women. Let’s just say they have a long way to go.

.

QOTD:A warped Republican

by digby

Chris Cuomo asked Ben Carson whether the courts should step in when people vote to violate the rights of some of their citizens as they are doing in some places on marriage equality. He referenced slavery as an example:

You can’t just say because it happened that way, this time this is the same situation,” Carson opined. “It’s not the same situation. Because people have no control over their race for instance.”

“You think they have control over their sexuality?” Cuomo wondered.

“Absolutely,” Carson replied.

“You think being gay is a choice,” Cuomo pressed.

“Absolutely,” Carson said. “Because a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”

I don’t know where he got that idea or if it’s true that when “a lot” of straight people come out of prison they are gay. I’m sure it happens. A lot of people go into college straight and come out gay. A lot of people probably join the military straight and come out gay. The fact is that a whole lot of people try to convince themselves they are straight and at some point realize they are gay. That does not denote a choice. It denotes a recognition.

And anyway, I don’t know what business it is of his whether people have a choice or are born gay in the first place as to whether or not they should have the right to marry. Either way he’s wrong. But it seems to me that he’s somehow referencing the hideous reality of prison rape and suggesting that this barbaric practice somehow turns people gay. Which is so gross I don’t even know what to say.

I would express shock and dismay that so many Republicans love what this man has to say, but why bother? To paraphrase Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC: the man has brilliant hands and a depraved mind.

.

Draft Donna Edwards!

by digby

This went out to Blue America members this morning:

I have a dream. I don’t know how realistic it is, but it doesn’t seem completely crazy. My dream is that my country will elect a superb leader, one who is wise and sharp and compassionate and educated, who understands what America needs and works effectively towards those goals. 
A few months ago I met Donna Edwards in Georgia. I had spoken to her many times on the phone but we had never met before. Of all the people I’ve talked to on behalf of Blue America, she’s the one who I am certain would best fulfill that dream.

That’s why we’d like to see Donna Edwards run for the Senate. 

“Politics has gone so hideously wrong”
by Tom Sullivan

We wrote here in the last couple of days about “House of Cards” and ugly political rumors. That kind of politics claimed the life of Missouri state auditor and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Schweich. Former Missouri Republican senator, John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, gave a eulogy Rachel Maddow last night said “scorched the political earth” before many of Missouri’s political elite after Schweich committed suicide last week:

Schweich died after an apparent suicide in his suburban St. Louis home last Thursday. Danforth said in his speech that he had spoken with Schweich two days before and that Schweich was “upset about” a radio commercial and a “whispering campaign” that he was Jewish.

The ad in question, run by the Citizens for Fairness PAC, features a narrator imitating “House of Cards” character Francis Underwood, calling him a weak candidate for governor who would lose in the general election.

Writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger gave one theory for the suicide:

I have no idea why Schweich killed himself. But for the past several days he had been confiding in me that he planned to accuse the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, John Hancock, with leading a “whisper campaign” among donors that he, Schweich, was Jewish.

He wasn’t, which is to say that he attended an Episcopal church, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t proud of his Jewish heritage, passed down from his grandfather.

Missouri is the state that gave us Frazier Glenn Miller, the raging racist who last year killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City. It’s the state in which on the day before Schweich died, the Anti-Defamation League reported on a rise of white supremacist prison gangs in the state.

Hancock, of course, denied he meant anything malicious:

Hancock has said that he may have mentioned his mistaken belief that Schweich was Jewish, but that it was innocent conversation. He has vehemently denied it was meant as a smear. He has said it was merely a description, similar to saying, “I’m Presbyterian and somebody else is Catholic.”

In his eulogy, Danforth wasn’t buying it:

Tom called this anti-Semitism, and of course it was. The only reason for going around saying that someone is Jewish is to make political profit from religious bigotry. Someone said this was no different than saying a person is a Presbyterian. Here’s how to test the credibility of that remark: When was the last time anyone sidled up to you and whispered into your ear that such and such a person is a Presbyterian?

The whispering campaign was classic Lee Atwater. (Ask John McCain.) The kind of politics RNC chief Ken Mehlman apologized for a decade ago, but that the party never really abandoned. It’s in its DNA now. Danforth continued:

The message for the rest of us reflects my own emotion after learning of Tom’s death, which has been overwhelming anger that politics has gone so hideously wrong, and that the death of Tom Schweich is the natural consequence of what politics has become. I believe deep in my heart that it’s now our duty, yours and mine, to turn politics into something much better than its now so miserable state.

Sure, politics has always been combative, but what we have just seen is combat of a very different order. It used to be that Labor Day of election years marked the beginning of campaigns.

This campaign for governor started two years in advance of the 2016 election. And even at this early date, what has been said is worse than anything in my memory, and that’s a long memory. I have never experienced an anti-Semitic campaign. Anti-Semitism is always wrong and we can never let it creep into politics.

As for the radio commercial, making fun of someone’s physical appearance, calling him a “little bug”, there is one word to describe it: “bullying.” And there is one word to describe the person behind it: “bully.”

We read stories about cyberbullying, and hear of young girls who killed themselves because of it. But what should we expect from children when grown ups are their examples of how bullies behave?

Since Thursday, some good people have said, “Well that’s just politics.” And Tom should have been less sensitive; he should have been tougher, and he should have been able to take it.

Well, that is accepting politics in its present state and that we cannot do. It amounts to blaming the victim, and it creates a new normal, where politics is only for the tough and the crude and the calloused.

Indeed, if this is what politics has become, what decent person would want to get into it? We should encourage normal people — yes, sensitive people — to seek public office, not drive them away.

There’s a principle of law called the thin skull rule. It says that if you hurt someone who is unusually susceptible to injury, you are liable even for the damages you didn’t anticipate. The person who caused the injury must pay, not the person with the thin skull. A good rule of law should be a good rule of politics. The bully should get the blame not the victim.

We often hear that words can’t hurt you. But that’s simply not true. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said just the opposite. Words for Jesus could be the moral equivalent of murder. He said if we insult a brother or sister we will be liable. He said if we call someone a fool we will be liable to hell. Well how about anti-Semitic whispers? And how about a radio ad that calls someone a “little bug,” and that is run anonymously over and over again?

Words do hurt. Words can kill. That has been proven right here in our home state.
There is no mystery as to why politicians conduct themselves this way. It works. They test how well it works in focus groups and opinion polls. It wins elections, and that is their objective. It’s hard to call holding office public service, because the day after the election it’s off to the next election, and there’s no interlude for service. It’s all about winning, winning at any cost to the opponent or to any sense of common decency.

The campaign that led to the death of Tom Schweich was the low point of politics, and now it’s time to turn this around. So let’s make Tom’s death a turning point here in our state.

Let’s decide that what may have been clever politics last week will work no longer. It will backfire. It will lose elections, not win them.

Let’s pledge that we will not put up with any whisper of anti-Semitism. We will stand against it as Americans and because our own faith demands it. We will take the battle Tom wanted to fight as our own cause.

We will see bullies for who they are. We will no longer let them hide behind their anonymous pseudo-committees. We will not accept their way as the way of politics. We will stand up to them and we will defeat them.

Good on him for saying so. Just don’t hold your breath.

House of evil

by digby

Like a lot of my fellow political junkies I’ve been enjoying House of Cards’ new season. (I’m not done watching yet …) But one thing that’s driven me nuts is the fact that Underwood is selling total Third Way bilge as the Democratic wish list. Not that there isn’t some basis in fact there — after all, elements of President Obama’s Grand Bargain came right out of a Third Way wet dream.

Richard Eskow points out that one of the founders of Third Way is a consultant on HOC which probably explains how this happened:

[W]ho knew that the show itself – not the characters, but the show – had a hidden agenda? It’s already taken on teachers. Now comes the anti-“entitlement” tirade from Frank Underwood in Episode One of the new season. Frank, despite his evil ways and means, has an ambitious dream, which is introduced during a lengthy scene in which he lectures his staff, and the audience, on some highly misleading “facts.”

How did that happen? How did the “AmericaWorks” fictional plot point come to be built on real-world lies?

Here’s a clue: Episode One’s credits list Jim Kessler as a consultant. Kessler is, as his IMDB biography notes, the co-founder of Third Way. That’s a Wall Street-funded, so-called “centrist” Democratic organization with a mission: to promote neoliberal economics and make the world safe (at least financially) for its wealthy patrons.

Third Way has consistently misrepresented the financial condition of Social Security, misdirected the public debate about Medicare, and generally promoted the socially liberal but fiscally conservative worldview of its patrons.

Kessler and co-founder Jon Cowan carefully tiptoed their way through the minefield of public opinion for years, pretending to be technocrats rather than de facto lobbyists for powerful interests. They finally lost their balance last year. When confronted with the rise of Elizabeth Warren and the populist wing of the Democratic Party, they lashed out at Sen. Warren with an intemperate Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Frank’s a Democrat, like all Third Way members, and his rant is filled with exactly the kind of misinformation and manipulation that we’ve come to expect from that corporatist crowd. “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, every entitlement program that is sucking us dry,” says Underwood in his rant, “I want it on the table.”

“Sucking us dry”? That’s economic gibberish.

“We obviously have to get back to some basics,” Underwood says in his rant, “remind ourselves of some of the facts that are before us …” (emphasis ours.)

Underwood continues: “This (the number $32,781, displayed on a flip chart) is what the average senior gets in one year from entitlements …This money is a job we could be giving to a single mother or a student just out of school. Now at the moment, 44 cents of every tax dollar goes to pay for these programs. By 2030, it’ll be over half, 62 cents.”

“Entitlements are bankrupting us,” he concludes.

Except that they’re not. Social Security accounts for 24 percent of the federal budget, but it is forbidden by law from adding to the overall deficit. What’s more, its trust fund is currently holding $2.8 trillion dollars in reserves. The statement is meaningless.

Eskow details many other examples of Frank Underwood’s Third Way cant in House of Cards.

But here’s the thing. The man proposing all these Third Way solutions is a homicidal sociopath. I’m going to guess that Kessler didn’t mean to associate his pet agenda with a character who will be remembered as the most malignant fictional politician in TV history but that’s what he’s done. And it’s very believable.

.

Sunday Night on Virtually Speaking Digby and I talked about the Leonard Nimoy’s passing and how fiction and fictional characters can shape people’s attitudes.  (podcast link here.)

Does anyone really expect a TV show about politics to be a more realistic representation of that life and that process than the Monkees represented a life of trying to make it as a young band in theirs?

This seems like such an obvious point I realized that I was NOT asking the question that the producers and writers of the show were asking themselves, which is, “Is it entertaining?“

Last night I watched a movie called “Harmontown” about the creator of Community, Dan Harmon. He talked about his deep desire to entertain people. He craved the satisfaction he got knowing his writing made people laugh, smile or feel better.

I watch a lot of fiction on tv. I also read a lot of fiction. I sometimes forget that my attitudes are shaped by people whose goal is to entertain.

If people think that it’s a “message movie” it will often turn them off. “I don’t want people to ram their message down my throat!” they say, even if they might agree with the message. When the question, “Is it entertaining?” is answered first, any message it might also have slides in more subtly and perhaps more effectively.

A message that writers of TV and movies have been sending for a long time is torture is effective. On tv and movies they show it is effective in getting non-false, new information in a short time.  They show the threat of torture is effective. It has become so ingrained in our thinking that when confronted with the reality of torture, reality is questioned, not the fiction.

The fiction that we see in our movies and TV shows are designed to be entertaining. Torture, and the threat of torture, serve the needs of the writers in these cases. It can make the story more dramatic, horrifying, gruesome, sexy and even funny. Its use serves a major goal of fiction, entertainment.

Torture’s use can move the story forward, show character traits, tap into viewer or readers empathy or fear.

When the Senate report on torture came out showing that actionable intelligence was not obtained by torture, it seemed to go against what we knew from fiction or what we read and heard about from the “real” world and “the dark side” that Cheney talked about.

This “non-fiction” about torture is coming from a media that gets their info from an entire group of people in the CIA whose job it was to push the lie that torture got them intel.

Interestingly for some media, torture not working goes against their “common sense.” A sense based on school yard experience and low tolerance for pain.

“I would totally spill the beans if I was tortured!” They might say. This assumes they knew about the beans in the first place.

“I would torture if we needed that bomb location.” They would say on their TV show. This assumes the person they are torturing knows the bomb location, is just like us and not someone who would rather die than “spill the beans.”

So the question is, if fiction better mirrored the reality of torture, would it still be entertaining? I don’t mean fun or likable, but entertaining in its broadest sense.

I haven’t seen American Sniper, but I understand that it is an entertaining movie. I think about another entertaining film from Clint Eastwood, one that had a killer as a lead character. A movie that helped change attitudes toward a fictional character we believed we knew.

The Schofield Kid: [after killing a man for the first time] It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
Will Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid. 

The fictional movies and TV shows that flip the idea of a “heroic torturer” and effectiveness of torture on its head might be out there, but they aren’t coming through with the same power as other fictions.

If these ideas do start showing up in our fiction, I believe the writers can make them as useful to their stories as their previous ideas on torture, and just as entertaining.

The Crisis Chronicles

by digby

Steve Benen made a list of the GOP House’s accomplishments:

[S]ince January 2011, Congress has excelled in one area: manufacturing avoidable crises. If there’s one thing a GOP majority has guaranteed, it’s that the nation’s legislative branch will careen, over and over again, from one self-imposed crisis to the next.

* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.

* July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.

* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.

* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.

* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.

* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

Boehner made a surprise move to bring the DHS funding bill to the floor today and it passed. With most Republicans voting against it. Still, they are undoubtedly relieved to have it passed so they can go back to bashing Democrats for being soft on national security and law enforcement.

Who know what any of this really adds up to for the GOP but in their view it’s been worth a lot. Over the course of these last few years of rolling from one crisis to another they have increased their margin in the House dramatically and they won a majority in the Senate. So I wouldn’t expect these games of chicken to stop any time soon.

.

The Man Called Petraeus gets a slap on the wrist

by digby

While others got years in jail. Socked, I tell you, shocked. Emptywheel has the best, most succinct, rundown of The Man Called Petraeus’ plea deal:

Among the materials in the eight “Black Books” Petraeus shared with Broadwell were:

…classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America.

The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret/SCI and code word information.

Petraeus kept those Black Books full of code word information including covert identities and conversations with the President “in a rucksack up there somewhere.”

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

For mishandling some of the most important secrets the nation has, Petraeus will plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Petraeus, now an employee of a top private equity firm, will be fined $40,000 and serve two years of probation.

He will not, however, be asked to plead guilty at all for lying to FBI investigators. In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI,

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

For lying to the FBI — a crime that others go to prison for for months and years — Petraeus will just get a two point enhancement on his sentencing guidelines. The Department of Justice basically completely wiped away the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress.

When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officer’s identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,

Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.

Those oaths obviously matter a little more for some than they do for others.

McCain on Petraeus: He apologized and expressed deep regret for this situation, and I believe it is time to consider this matter closed.— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 3, 2015