Month: May 2015

Out of the Cotton mouths of babes

by digby

If you want to know exactly how the Republicans will frame the Iraq war going forward,  I think Tom Cotton has formulated it the clearest of all of them:

“We should not be ashamed of the war we conducted in Iraq,” he told the Washington Examiner.

“You don’t get to live life in reverse. What a leader has to do is make a decision, at the moment of decision, based on the best information he has. George Bush did that in 2002 and 2003 and he was supported by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and John Kerry and every western country’s intelligence agency,” Cotton continued. “There are lessons we can learn from the early days of the Iraq war. One is that we clearly should be more critically analytical about our approach to intelligence assessments.”

Cotton then shifted his attention to President Obama and criticized his decision to withdraw troops from Iraq.

“The indictment of President Obama’s policy is much worse than the purported indictment of President Bush’s policy because everyone questions if we had known then what we know now,” Cotton told the Examiner. “It’s hard to analyze hypotheticals in history; I’m confident that the world is a better place and the world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein removed from power.”

“President Obama knew then what was going to happen, because his military commanders were advising him that they needed a small stay-behind force of 10,000 to 15,000 troops,” he continued. “President Obama, for political reasons, knowing what he knew then, still made the decision to withdraw all our troops from Iraq.”

It’s unlikely that this will be adopted as the primary argument among a majority of Americans. it reeks of hackish partisanship. But the press will likely report this going forward as a “he said/she said” and just as people continued to say that Vietnam could have been one if only they’d let the military do what it knew how to do, some will agree with Cotton. And in case you don’t remember, it was that attitude that partially led the way for Ronald Reagan to bring his big swinging patriotism to washington in 1980. It’s important not to let thise these get out of hand.

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Big donor just wants to serve Man
by Tom Sullivan

We’re not exactly envious of the state of Oklahoma where Charlie Pierce ends his regular peek into the Laboratories of Democracy. Let’s just say there’s some serious experimentin’ he’s missed going on in the Tarheel State. A major donor Republican donor earlier this week put a fountain pen to his temple and told North Carolina’s GOP legislators that if he doesn’t get the tax and spending cuts he wants, their $25,000 donation gets it:

Raleigh businessman Bob Luddy, who chairs the board of the conservative Civitas Institute think tank and is an influential financial supporter of conservative candidates, emailed a sharp critique of the House budget to House Republicans, who are in the majority.

Luddy complained that the budget advancing to a major vote on Thursday does not include new tax cuts and extends tax breaks for specific industries. He called the spending plan too “liberal” and said he’s decided to withold his planned, annual donation to the House Republicans’ campaign committee.

Posting on the Civitas web site, Luddy wrote:

I had planned to donate $25,000 this year to the House Republican Caucus to help re-elect a conservative super-majority.

Unfortunately, after seeing the $1.3 billion in additional spending and no across the board tax relief in the proposed house budget I had to reconsider.

Today, I decided to give the $25,000 intended for the House Caucus to Americans for Prosperity NC to fight the Liberal House spending plan.

It’s not as if Luddy phoned in an order for legislation drafted to his specifications the way Michael Eisenga did in Wisconsin. That wealthy donor recruited a state lawmaker to write a bill that would lower his child support payments. No, Luddy, who owns a $300 million heating and ventilation company and chairs a chain of charter schools, was slightly more subtle.

“Special interests” really get under this deluxe, extra-special donor’s skin, the Raleigh News and Observer reported:

He added that his own involvement isn’t based on self-interest. “I don’t want anything from them except good government,” he said. “You won’t see me advocate for anything beyond better education, lower taxes and good government.”

Luddy the Benevolent just wants To Serve Man.

Calling Luddy’s maneuver “borderline illegal,” the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board wrote:

It’s no secret that money has always talked loudly in politics. But thanks to rollbacks in campaign finance laws, along with the Supreme Court’s ill-advised Citizens United ruling, wealth has as big of an influence as ever – regardless of party. Luddy’s outburst this week is a reflection of how emboldened big donors have become.

No kidding.

Deadly oil killers

by digby

I normally take this space to show you some cute animals to make you feel better after a long week. Unfortunately, I can’t do it this week because this is happening right up the coast from where I live and it’s breaking my heart:

That is a beautiful pelican drowning in fucking oil!!!

I won’t show you the pics of the sea lions. It’s too much. This part of the California coast is like the northern galapagos, tons of unusual species all living together usually pretty undisturbed.

This oil company undoubtedly figures this is the cost of doing business:

Plains All American Pipeline LP Chairman and CEO Greg L. Armstrong apologized at a news conference, according to the Associated Press: “We deeply, deeply regret that this incident has occured at all. We apologize for the damage that it’s done to the wildlife and to the environment and we’re very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that it’s caused on the citizens and the visitors to this area.”

The L.A. Times went through federal records and found that Plains Pipeline, which is responsible for the oil spill and is the company that is part of the Plains All American Pipeline LP, has had a bad track record with safety. The records show that they’ve had 175 safety and maintenance infractions since 2006.

How’s BP doing these days guys? Are their executives and shareholders ok? I worry.

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Here comes Hucky boo-boo 

by digby

Mike Huckabee, proving that he’s the one true social conservative, came out in support of Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the “19 Kids and Counting” clan who has admitted to molesting young girls (presumably his sisters among them) and who reports indicate was never treated or even really punished for his behavior:

“Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family,” Huckabee wrote in a Facebook post. “Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable.'”

Earlier this month, the Duggars announced that they had endorsed Huckabee for president, as they did in 2008. “America needs Governor Huckabee for president! Governor Huckabee has the communication skills of Ronald Reagan, and a common sense business approach to government.”

On Thursday, Duggar resigned his position as executive director of the DC-based FRC Action, a legislative organization that calls for the “renewal of ethical monotheism and traditional Judeo-Christian standards of morality.” The star of 19 Kids and Counting, which recounts Duggar and his siblings’ life as members of a large Christian family in Arkansas, told In Touch Weekly, which broke the story, that he “acted inexcusably” and was “extremely sorry” and that he and his victims had received counseling.

His place as a cultural and political star had meant that he had contacts with multiple politicians, including candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination for president, sometimes of the picture-for-Twitter variety, and sometimes appearing with Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Huckabee at FRC events.

“Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends,” Huckabee ended his posting, referring to the Duggar family. “Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.”

That’s nice. And I’ll bet the hardcore religious right will do so as well. What he did was distasteful to them sure, but it’s not as distasteful as admitting that all their “traditions” are actually just a cover for primitive immoral behavior among the top echelon males in the patriarchal organizations of both the family and the church. Josh Duggar is an eldest son. He was a sexually repressed, immature young man just exercising the privilege he felt he had from the time he was born.

It’s always so interesting to see these religious super-stars fall from grace. The Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts and Ted Haggards. Is it just that religious conservatives who seek fame and fortune are they types of people who do this sort of thing? Or is it that this type of thing is common among religious conservatives?

In any case, the Duggar connection runs deep in Republican politics. Josh was a player at the Family Research Council: his job for the past two years has been the executive director of FRC Action in Washington, the non-profit and tax-exempt legislative action arm. He’s not just another guy getting his picture taken with a politician:

TLC fired Honey boo-boo when her mother got back together with someone her eldest daughter had accused of molestation. But then they were anything but squeaky clean religious icons were they? It’s going to be interesting to see if the Duck Dynasty wingnut defenders come to the Duggars’ rescue this time. S0o far, Mike Huckabee’s the only one to step up.  My guess is that it will help him.

Update:

h/t to @GottaLaff and Diane Sweet

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Rand’s “Bonuses for Cost-Cutters Act for 2015”

by digby

Oh, this is a sweet scam.  Rand Paul may actually get a vote on his proposal to allow employees of agencies to get bonuses for identifying “surplus funds” which will be sent to general funds and used for specifically for deficit reduction. Golly, what could possibly go wrong with that?

This is a very, very sneaky way of impounding congressionally mandated funds to use for purposes for which they were not intended. The bonus part is especially savvy — it takes away the incentive some agency employees might have to properly do their jobs and instead put taxpayer money in their own pockets. This will make the agency less effective at the same time!  It’s a two-fer.

They never quit.

*And by the way, he has a Democratic co-sponsor: Mark Warner.

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The banality of torture

by digby

So torture works, which is why the supporters of the torture program insist they were right to do it. Well, it works on lily-livered terrorists, anyway.

This is the citation for Medal of Honor winner Lance Peter Sijan:

While on a flight over North Vietnam, Capt. Sijan ejected from his disabled aircraft and successfully evaded capture for more than 6 weeks. During this time, he was seriously injured and suffered from shock and extreme weight loss due to lack of food. After being captured by North Vietnamese soldiers, Capt. Sijan was taken to a holding point for subsequent transfer to a prisoner of war camp.

In his emaciated and crippled condition, he overpowered 1 of his guards and crawled into the jungle, only to be recaptured after several hours. He was then transferred to another prison camp where he was kept in solitary confinement and interrogated at length. During interrogation, he was severely tortured; however, he did not divulge any information to his captors.

Capt. Sijan lapsed into delirium and was placed in the care of another prisoner. During his intermittent periods of consciousness until his death, he never complained of his physical condition and, on several occasions, spoke of future escape attempts. Capt. Sijan’s extraordinary heroism and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty at the cost of his life are in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Air Force and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Armed Forces./S/GERALD R. FORD

I can’t help but think about that sociopath, ex-CIA chief John McLaughlin’s comments on the Frontline documentary the other night in which he justified our depraved torture program by saying:

[W]hen I read the Senate report, and I read some of what’s in it, I don’t know how much to take it at face value, because I know of instances where they’re reciting emails that they have either distorted, or they have taken out of context. In one case, for example, they reported an email from an employee that they characterized as the employee saying, “Abu Zubaydah has no more to tell us,” when, in fact, if read in context, the entire email, what the employee is saying is, “He’s very resistant to interrogation techniques. He’s been well-trained.” … That’s the first point.

The second point is, there are often differences between headquarters and the field about the scope or magnitude or approach to use. Sometimes the field is right. But, frankly, sometimes headquarters is right, because at headquarters, you have people with a broader field of vision, who are looking at the large strategic picture, and who have, frankly, more information than you do in some isolated spot in the field about the larger picture.

That is such utter nonsense on so many levels it makes your head spin. First of all, he’s the one leaving out necessary context. According to those emails, some of the torturers were disgusted by their own behavior and were sickened by what they were being asked to do knowing that the guy had nothing more to give up.  (“He, on the other hand, adquarters” seems to have been getting off on their titillating daily reports and just wanted more of it.)

Perhaps most importantly, there is one little fact about this that McLaughlin and company never acknowledge.

Zubaydah’s connection to Al Qaeda is now often said to have been overstated,and in response to his habeas corpus petition, the U.S. Government stated in 2009 that they did not contend that Zubaydah had any involvement with the 9/11 attacks or that he had even been a member of Al Qaeda.

You see, we didn’t just torture top military prisoners like Captain Sijan. We tortured low level grunts who knew nothing, ordinary people who were captured as part of a “reward program” that incentivized locals to name their personal enemies and sometimes we even tortured (or “rendered” to other countries to be tortured )completely innocent people and simple cases of mistaken identity. The only thing those men ever signed on to was have a middle eastern name. It’s disgusting that they continue to pretend that this sadistic program, the gory details of which “headquarters” would sit around breathlessly discussing at their famous “5 o’clock” meetings had any moral basis at all.

I wish someone, Bill Maher for instance, would tell me why this is considered so civilized in comparison to those barbaric Muslims.

Is it just the utter banality of the evil of it? That the people who did it look like this?

h/t @JakeTapper

Christie lets fly. Again.

by digby

I’m guessing Chris Christie has pretty much figured out that he isn’t going to be president:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) gave a speech on Wednesday full of vulgarities directed at reporters over the George Washington Bridge scandal, New Jersey’s finances, and his travel history.

“We don’t give a s— about this or any of you,” Christie told a crowd of 350 people at the Hamilton banquet hall on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg Politics. The event was an annual event in New Jersey which features a roast of the sitting New Jersey governor. Elected officials, journalists, and lobbyists attend the event.

The New Jersey governor said one journalist should “open your eyes” and “clean the s— out of your ears.”

“This is a guy who says he doesn’t know what I’m doing every day,” Christie said of another journalist according to the Bloomberg report. “Then just get the f— away from me if you don’t know what I’m doing.”

Bloomberg obtained audio of Christie’s remarks. Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said that Christie’s comments were just jokes and made under the premise that they would not be published.

I know right wingers love bullies and hate the press. But when you’re running for president you really can’t go around saying stuff like “Get the fuck away from me” and “clean the shit out of your ears” in public. (Can you?)

And when are these idiots going to understand that everyone has recording devices at all times? There’s no “off the record” in any speech you give to a group. One would have thought that was obvious even before everyone had recording devices.

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The C word vs the L word

by digby

Lookee here.  After decades of demonizing the L word, it looks like it’s making a comeback.  And the C word is no longer the proud identity it once was.

And here I thought it was a given that this country is a very conservative nation and that liberals are always on the fringe. How long do you suppose it will take for the Villagers to catch on? Or will they just ignore it?

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Where are the calls for the GOP to “Ray Stevens” the base?

by digby

I wrote about the GOP’s xenophobia primary today for Salon. They just can’t get out of the quicksand:

One of the most enduring political establishment tropes of the last two decades is the one which says that the Democratic presidential candidate must, at some point, do what Bill Clinton did back in 1992 and “Sistah Soljah” the base. This requirement stems from the assumption, still widely held in Washington, that left of the Democratic party is wildly out of step with the country and in order to win the candidate must repudiate that part of the party lest he or she be tagged as an extremist. You’ll recall that this refers to a speech Clinton made to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition convention in which he took the rapper known as Sistah Soljah to task saying:

If you took the words “white” and “black” and reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech…. We have an obligation, all of us, to call attention to prejudice whenever we see it.

He was applauded for being brave enough to risk the opprobrium of African Americans who were seen as having a chokehold on the Party, what with all their welfare using and crime causing. Clinton’s bold repudiation of the Soljah Strawman was widely seen as a necessary corrective for the Party and was in keeping with Clinton’s New Democrat agenda. It thrilled the punditocracy and it became a matter of necessity for any serious Democratic candidate to find a way to tell off liberal voters in order to “move to the center.”

However, as the Republicans really have become trapped by their most extremist voters, there have been very few calls for them to “Sistah Soljah” any part of their own base even if it would mean expanding their ability to win national elections. Ex-Bush official Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner wrote a piece called “How to Save the Republican party” a while back in which they referenced Clinton’s tactic but they don’t explicitly point out any area in which the GOP could confront and insult a particular voting bloc to signal their “bravery” and willingness to take on the “special interests” in their own party. They write that the GOP should moderate its views on science and gay marriage but they don’t suggest that candidates give speeches denouncing creationists and religious leaders. They just say everyone should be more “inclusive,” which is awfully nice.

And certainly we have not heard anyone in the mainstream chattering classes suggesting that in order to get elected, the Republican candidates must show up at NRA conventions and religious gatherings and insult their true believers to their face. The right-wing extremist factions are still afforded tremendous respect as full-fledged members of the body politic and no Republican candidate is being asked to put them in their place so that the rest of the country will be reassured that the inmates aren’t running the asylum.

Their biggest problem is their base’s xenophobia as it’s knocking them out of contention in national elections. So I offer up the country singer Ray Stevens as someone for say, Jeb Bush to publicly scold for his song “Come to the USA”:

There’s no penalty to pay
Should you get caught illegally immigratin’

Come to the USA.
It will be your lucky day
‘Cause when you get in there’s lots of goodies waitin’

Like health care, welfare, free education,
Help with your voter registration
And drivers license and credit cards
And license plates for your old car.

Lots of jobs for you to do
And employers who’ll turn a blind eye, too.
Come to the USA!

No need to worry about the Constitution.
We’ll help you start a house of prostitution
If that’s the kind of work that you wanna do
You see, those gringo infidels are crazy.
They’ll give citizenship to your new baby.
So, you see, there’s really only one choice for you.

More here

Jebbie finds a message
by Tom Sullivan

They’re scientists. They know stuff. Of course, they’re elitists.

In all the earned media Jeb Bush got with his complaint about climate science the other day, nobody noticed…. Well, first, his statement via Think Progress (emphasis mine):

In comments reported by CNN on Wednesday, the potential 2016 presidential candidate called the science of human-caused climate change “convoluted,” and questioned the degree to which carbon emissions are responsible.

“For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you,” he reportedly said. “It’s this intellectual arrogance that now you can’t have a conversation about it, even.”

I’m loathe to call Bush’s statement brilliant, or to suggest that he planned it — it was probably just reflex — but that really is a clever bit of wedge politics. It plays to a carefully cultivated anti-intellectual sentiment among GOP base voters. You don’t have to be Richard Hofstadter to figure it out. What the left sees as pandering to anti-science sentiment on the right (or to oil interests) is really the politics of resentment. Also carefully cultivated. Us vs. Them. Real Americans vs. snooty intellectuals. Or the ever-popular city vs. county (deployed frequently around these parts).

And like Pavlov’s dog, the left rose to the bait. (Okay, a bit of mixed metaphor there.) Think Progress went all “just the facts, ma’am”:

Of the climate scientists who actively publish research, 97 percent agree that humans cause climate change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which draws on the knowledge of almost 800 climate experts across the globe — says it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities are the main cause of atmospheric and ocean warming since the 1950s.

CNN reported:

The Democratic National Committee was quick to respond to Bush’s comments Wednesday night.

“Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that human activity has led to climate change. Ninety-seven percent. But Jeb Bush thinks they’re wrong. Who’s being intellectually arrogant now?” said Holly Shulman, DNC spokeswoman, in a written statement.

#Fail. Not only did they prove Jeb Bush’s point, they helped him disseminate it.

And his point was? Bush was responding to a quote from President Obama’s commencement speech earlier in the day at the Coast Guard Academy. Obama said, “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security … it will impact how our military defends our country.” Which is already true. But truth was not Bush’s point. Truthiness was. And the truthiness is, smartypants lefty intellectuals look down their noses at Real Americans who disagree with them. His Mr. Rogers-ish meta message was, “I like you just the way you are. They disrespect you because you don’t think like them.”

The left did exactly what it was supposed to. It responded with facts. Bush? Bush was on message.