Month: September 2015

by tristero

Another right wing sex scandal.

The controversial House Majority Leader in Indiana — he cosponsored the state’s “religious freedom” law — resigned suddenly on Tuesday after a sexually compromising video was sent to all of the people on his “Contacts” list, the Advocate’s Bill Browning reports… 

During his five years in the legislature, McMillan has crusaded to “protect the integrity of the institution of marriage,” but the Advocate reported that the woman on the video he texted was not, in fact, his wife. According to his campaign website, he claimed that “the family has always been the foundation of our strength of community” and that “[i]n these times of turmoil the rest of the country could learn something from our example.”

The integrity of the witch-hunt

by digby

If you want to understand just how badly Kevin McCarthy gave away the game with his Benghazi gaffe, read this piece by Joe Conason in which he pulls up Boehner and Gowdy’s lugubrious comments about the integrity of their expensive witch-hunt:

Even Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace sounded skeptical when he interviewed the Speaker last February:

Wallace: Finally, you have set up a select committee to investigate what happened in Benghazi, even though there have been about a half dozen investigations; the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee basically said there was no there there — like this last year. Some people have questioned: is all of this an effort to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign?

Boehner: No, Chris, it’s — the idea here is to get the American people the facts about what happened.

Here’s the part about Gowdy:

For the rest of us to fully understand this craven betrayal of the solemn responsibilities entrusted to congressional leadership, let’s begin with Gowdy’s own remarks on the day that his committee’s work began last January.

“I remain hopeful there are still things left in our country that can transcend politics. I remain convinced our fellow citizens deserve all of the facts of what happened before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi and they deserve an investigative process worthy of the memory of those who died and worthy of the trust of our fellow citizens…

“The people we work for yearn to see the right thing done, for the right reasons, and in the right way. They want to know that something can rise above the din of politics. They want to trust the institutions of government. So to fulfill the duties owed to those we serve and in honor of those who were killed perhaps we can be what those four brave men were: neither Republican nor Democrat. We can just be Americans in pursuit of the facts, the truth, and justice no matter where that journey takes us.”

Golly, that made me want to break into a chorus of “God Bless America” and if it weren’t 88 degrees in my house right now I’d have run into the kitchen and immediately baked an apple pie.

It’s not that we didn’t know they were leaking like seives and using the committee’s investigative powers for political purposes. We have. As Conason points out:

There is little doubt, for instance, that Gowdy’s crew was behind the false “criminal referral” leak last summer that so badly embarrassed its enthusiastic recipients at the New York Times. The committee members spent hours (and taxpayer dollars) behind closed doors, grilling Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal not about Benghazi, a topic on which he had no personal knowledge, but about his work with Media Matters for America and American Bridge. Of approximately 550 questions posed to Blumenthal, less than two-dozen concerned the terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In fact, the pertinent questions that Boehner and Gowdy claimed to be exploring were already answered by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI, now retired). The HPSCI report concluded last November that there was no “stand-down” order, as Boehner once claimed, no intelligence failure, and no inappropriate conduct by any responsible officials before, during, or after the terrorist assault.

More at the link.

None of that matters of course. They want to get their grubby mitts on Clinton’s personal emails and they won’t stop until they’ve pawed through every single one for evidence of something dirty or corrupt — or at least can make it look it that way with selective leaks and insinuations. And they’ll have the full cooperation of the press which, according Ruth Marcus on Andrea Mitchell this morning, they just can’t help obsessing over like a bunch of hungry vultures, to the exclusion of virtually everything else, because there are emails.

If you are confused by all this and don’t understand the dynamic surrounding this inane email controversy, you should read Conason and Gene Lyons’ ebook The Hunting of Hillary, which recounts the true history of the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Even if you loathe Clinton with every fiber of your being you should be concerned about this. They’ll use these methods against anyone, just ask John Kerry or Al Gore. If you like Bernie or Biden don’t think they won’t find a way to get them with this stuff or that the press won’t eagerly swallow every tid-bit they give them if they sense blood in the water. The desire to get Clinton is even stronger among both the Republicans and the press, of course, because she and her husband survived the earlier attempt to destroy them and they are frustrated. But don’t think it can’t happen to any Democrat if the media decides to join in. Character assassination by a thousand cuts is their MO and it’s very powerful.

Oh, and by the way, their 9th witchhunt committee has spent 4 million dollars and counting. And that’s on top of all the money they spent on the previous 8 investigations.

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Fiorina and her mentor in the dark art of lying, Dick Cheney

by digby

I wrote about Carly Fiorina and Dick Cheney, at Salon today:

The enormity of the fabrication surprised me; the fact that nobody had ever seen this extraordinary smoking gun before stunned me; the fact that not one of the journalists moderating the debate followed up on her claim surprised me. The fact that contemporaneous mainstream media reports of the debate—more theater criticism than journalism—failed to fact-check it surprised me. The people who did fact-check it all immediately agreed that it wasn’t true, and yet Fiorina’s word-picture was touted for days as the emotional zenith of the debate. This all surprised me: the notion that journalism and fact-finding are demonstrably unrelated enterprises.

We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.”

“We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

More at the link about Fiorina’s latest attempt to follow in her mentor’s footsteps on the subject of torture. Why wouldn’t she?

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Press fail #7,332

by digby

Last night, TIME magazine put out this story without any context or comment from any experts:

The video that Carly Fiorina graphically described at the last Republican presidential debate, depicting a moving fetus on a table following an apparent abortion, was released online in its entirety Tuesday morning, according to Gregg Cunningham, the founder of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, who collected the footage.

Cunningham, an anti-abortion activist, declined to identify the date, location or authors of the video in an interview with TIME Monday night, saying his group makes agreements of confidentiality in an effort to acquire images of abortions. He also made no claim that the images shown in the video had anything to do with Planned Parenthood, the organization that Fiorina and others have targeted for federal defunding. “I am neither confirming or denying the affiliation of the clinic who did this abortion,” Cunningham said.

During the debate on Sept. 16, Fiorina denounced the images on videos that had been produced by a separate group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). “As regards [to] Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes,” she said. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

No video released by the Center for Medical Progress showed the image Fiorina described, but one of the CMP videos does include a brief edited clip from the video Cunningham released on Tuesday, showing a fetus on a stainless steel background with its leg moving.

David Daleiden, who created the Center for Medical Progress videos, edited in the Cunningham footage to illustrate a story that he had been told on camera of a medical technician witnessing an abortion that resulted in an extracted fetus with moving legs and beating heart.

The full source video, which is extremely graphic, lasts about 13 minutes, and shows a fetus being extracted from the mother, placed in a metal bowl, prodded with medical instruments and handled by someone in the room. At times the fetus appears to move, and at other times it appears to have a pulse. There are no images on the full video of any attempt to harvest the brain of the fetus, and there is no sound. Cunningham said the jump cuts in the video are the result of the camera being turned off and on.

Cunningham says he is confident the procedure was an abortion, and not a miscarriage, owing to the lack of medical treatment offered to the fetus. He said he estimated the age of the fetus at about 17 and a half weeks. “It is unimaginably more horrifying than the clip that we licensed for CMP to use and that Carly Fiorina made reference to in the debate,” Cunningham said.

There were a couple more paragraphs with quotes from Cunningham, who is an ex Air Force colonel and wingnut GOP politician and that’s it. Can you see what they forgot to do? That’s right, they forgot to ask an actual doctor if what this zealot says makes any sense.

Today there’s this update, which is the least they can do:

UPDATE: Hours after the publication of the video, several medical experts raised questions about whether the video showed an abortion or a miscarriage. Current medical guidelines do not call for resuscitation of a fetus at 17 and a half weeks. For a fuller discussion of the accepted medical practice, click here.

Here’s a doctor who looked at the footage:

The Center for Bio-Ethical reform released the full video of Fiorina’s “fully formed fetus.” It’s a premature delivery.

Slate has a good summary of the issues involved and has a wonderful conclusion about what the full video adds, “the revelation that the fetus came out of a woman’s body.”

Greg Cunningham, the curator of the illegally obtained video and the founder of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, told Time magazine that it had to be an abortion “owing to the lack of medical treatment offered to the fetus.” The statement underscores the fact that Cunningham has no idea what he is talking about as the fetus is 17-18 weeks and hence pre viable so no one would render care. It is highly atypical to offer neonatal care before 23 weeks. A neonatologist who attempt to resuscitate a 17 week delivery would be considered unethical.

It is easy to see how someone who has no obstetrical training might think this could be something other than a previable premature delivery. Cunningham’s statements clearly show he is no medical expert and isn’t in the position to explain it. However, I am.

Here are all the issues with the video from start to finish:

It is illegally and clandestinely shot. I feel very badly for the poor woman in question and wonder why Fiorina and our elected officials are not as outraged as I am about her violation and exploitation. I had second thoughts about watching it myself given the lack of consent from the woman, however, I felt if I could end the conversation about it faster by weighing in. Time magazine or Slate have links.

The prep of the patient. The physician (I’m assuming) pours surgical prep/cleaner on the woman’s perineum. We don’t do that anymore for spontaneous deliveries or for abortions that involve induction of labor. This tells me this video is at least 15 years old or from another country.

The delivery. It is a spontaneous delivery as the operator waits for the fetus to be expelled.
This is what we do with a previable premature delivery. If this were shot mid way through a 2nd trimester abortion (meaning the Laminaria in the cervix, which are osmotic sticks that help the cervix dilate, had just been removed) it is highly unlikely the operator would have waited for a spontaneous expulsion.

The cord is clamped on the fetal side. If this were an abortion it would just be cut. Really. No one ever does this with an abortion as it serves no purpose.

Waiting for the placenta. The clamp is left on the placental end and at the end of the video the placenta still hasn’t delivered. If this were an abortion the placenta would be removed with suction immediately, no one would wait 11 minutes. Ever. Every abortion clinic has a suction machine.

There is no proof this video is in a Planned Parenthood clinic never mind in the United States. This could easily be an operating room.

Instead of wasting tax payer dollars over highly edited videos our government should be investigating who illegally taped this woman’s delivery. If Cunningham says he didn’t take the video then of course he also can’t be sure what was going on. He can’t have it both ways.

Just so you know. They’re lying. At this point, the assumption among the press should be that they are lying until proven otherwise.

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She’s just a hardworking secretary

by digby

Carly Fiorina is very, very annoying:

“Crony capitalism is alive and well,” she told Beck. “When you have big, powerful, complicated, costly government, only the wealthy, the powerful, the big and the well-connected can handle it and all the rest of us are getting crushed. And people see that, they feel it in the bones. In their bones, people know if something is so complicated I don’t understand it, I’m getting screwed.”

I’ve got your crony capitalism right here:

Biggest Golden Parachutes

As outcry grows over executives who reap millions in severance bonuses in the face of their companies’ downfalls and bail-outs, TIME takes a look at other golden parachutes — and the people who opened them.

With Fiorina as chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard’s value declined significantly and the technology giant endured massive layoffs. Fiorina led a largely unsuccessful merger with Compaq in 2002, going against the wishes of company founder Walter Hewlett. Asked by the board of directors to step down in 2005, Fiorina left with $21 million in cash, plus stock and pension benefits worth another $19 million. According to HP executive compensation rules, departing executives are entitled to no more than 2.99 times their base salary; anything more requires stockholder approval. Fiorina’s parachute was more than that, so the stockholders filed a class action suit (a federal judge dismissed it in April 2008).

This is the woman who laid off 30,000 people by simply saying “the jobs should be done elsewhere” meaning overseas. She’s now reportedly worth 60 million or so. And she hasn’t had a job since she left HP. That’s because her money is working for her these days. Nice, isn’t it? And yet she’s saying “only the wealthy, the powerful, the big and the well-connected can handle it and all the rest of us are getting crushed.”

Not that anyone will care. She’ll could just lie and say she never said anything like that and that she has no money. Waddaya gonna do?

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QOTD: Kevin McCarthy

by digby

At least he’s honest. When asked by Sean Hannity to give him an example of one thing the Republicans have won he said this:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

There you go.

But don’t let that stop the press from eagerly gobbling up every little piece of gossip their “sources” on the committee dribble out.

This was not a slip. He said the same thing on CNN.

It’s so obvious that they are using it as a political ploy that Jake Tapper didn’t even bother to follow up. But that’s kind of a problem, Congressional committees are supposed to be doing government oversight for the good of the country not to degrade their political opponents poll numbers, “win arguments” or otherwise use their ability to subpoena documents and testimony for political purposes.

That’s called “abuse of power” and it’s a big problem, especially if the future Speaker of the House is running around telling everyone it’s a-ok — indeed, something to be proud of.

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Sometimes the good guys win one

by digby

It gives you a little faith that good journalism can be appreciated and rewarded.

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Wingnut DARPA
by Tom Sullivan

North Carolina legislators were cooking up some particularly noxious potions yesterday here in one of Charlie Pierce’s Laboratories of Democracy. Pay attention. North Carolina has become wingnut DARPA for this stuff.

The NC state legislature adjourned for the year about the time I got up to write this. Twitter and email lit up last night after all the turds they’d kept plugged up in the legislative pipeline until the very last all spewed out into public view at once. Much like the infamous “motorcycle vagina” bill of 2013, some of the worst appeared as surprise revisions to other bills.

Ironically, a colleague yesterday noticed that sometime after September 2012 our local GOP website had quietly removed its “Principles” page from its website. They included “I BELIEVE the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.” Well, yesterday the “closest to the people” people in the state capitol attempted to prevent local governments in North Carolina from doing anything remotely progressive:

“This bill includes pages and pages of bans on local ordinances including banning living wage ordinances, local affordable housing ordinances and nondiscrimination ordinances,” wrote Burns, a Democrat and frequent critic of the legislature. “This bill would prevent cities such as Raleigh, Apex, Wake Forest or the County of Wake from passing and implementing many ordinances that result in progress.

North Carolina Policy Watch’s Progressive Pulse spelled out what SB 279 might do:

Many of the new restrictions are highly charged, including provisions that could allow local landlords to deny housing to veterans and seniors, permit local businesses to discriminate against their customers based on their sexual orientation, and prohibit city and county governments from passing living wage and paid sick ordinances to boost their local economies. One shocking provision may even stop local governments from requiring landlords to provide heating, air, and ventilation in their properties.

That one was attached to a bill on qualifications for professional counselors. It got sent back to committee to die. For now. It was so noxious even Republicans wouldn’t vote for it.

#NCPOL #NCGA #NCGOV NC Legislators don't want Washington telling them what to do. See the irony? http://t.co/cPAsyM1Vei The lust for power— William Osborne (@wosborne321) September 30, 2015

Another sought to transfer even more money from public education to charter schools. That one died too. For now.

Bill to shift more money from school districts to charters withdrawn from calendar #ncga #nced #ncpol @wunc— Jess Clark (@jessclarkNC) September 30, 2015

This session in Raleigh was supposed to be over long ago. But as I said the other day, the NCGOP has been out of power for so long, it doesn’t know how to lead, even if it wanted to. In the New York Times,
Geoffrey Kabaservice said the same of Washington: “The extremists have the ability to disrupt the Congress, but not to lead it.” Except to ruin.

A change is gonna come.

Unbelievable: Rep. Cleveland sez undocumented people have no right to police protection in NC #ncga #ncpol— Rob Schofield (@Rob_Schofield) September 30, 2015

Must be the money!


by digby

Good lord, the amount of money going to Republican “outside groups” is astonishing.  They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Ted Cruz has collected almost as much outside money as Hillary Clinton has collected in legitimate campaign cash. Ted Cruz. Think about that.

In case you haven’t heard this is the end of the fundraising quarter. Here’s a sample of Ted Cruz’s fundraising

I’m sure you’ve heard…the crowded field of presidential candidates is beginning to thin out, and what you may not know — money was a big factor. That’s why I’m emailing you today. Right now, we are still more than $400,000 short of our End of Quarter Goal. Since TWO of my fellow conservative candidates have been forced to drop out due to lack of funds, it is more urgent now than ever that I have your support before the hard cutoff of my fundraising deadline on Sept. 30th. I’ve asked my staff to put a clock below to show the amount of time left before my Federal Election Commission (FEC) fundraising deadline. FEC DEADLINE COUNTDOWN I’m personally asking: will you to chip in $35, $50, or $250 right now — BEFORE the clock runs out? After September 30th, EVERY presidential campaign must file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) detailing our contributions and expenditures. Once results are made public, every media outlet will have immediate access and begin scrutinizing each candidate’s report. I can feel it…Republicans across the country are fed up and will not allow the establishment to pick another “Campaign Conservative” nominee if we can offer them a proven conservative alternative! Douglas, the bottom line is this: a grassroots campaign like ours can’t afford setbacks. If our fundraising is not as strong as we need it to be — Washington insiders will use our disappointing numbers against us. We’re building real momentum in key states, but we must keep the campaign doors open if we want to fight off the Washington Cartel and be the ones to reignite liberty.

The Washington Cartel…You’ve got to love these guys.

Bush and Cruz have collected the most money.  Here’s what it’s bought them:

Bush’s decline is precipitous. He was at 17% in July. Cruz at least has ticked up a little bit. But neither one of them are setting records for anything but collecting rich people’s money and saying stupid things.

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At long last sir …

by digby

Jason Chaffetz is an asshole:

I don’t know if you know this but the only test a woman is allowed to have is a mammogram. If you need birth control, a pregnancy test or a pap smear you’re obviously a slut.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney ripped him afterwards:

“I first would like to register my opposition and my objection to the chairman beating up on a woman, on our witness today, for making a good salary,” Maloney said.

“The entire time I’ve been in Congress, I’ve never seen a witness beaten up and questioned about their salary,” she continued. “Ms. Richards heads a distinguished organization providing health care services to millions of Americans. I find it totally inappropriate and discriminatory.”

Just FYI Republicans, women love it when men shush them after asking them a question. We love that. It’s an awesome electoral ploy. Keep it up boys.

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