Because you need this
by digby
No cute animals tonight. Just a bad lip reading of the First Democratic debate:
I hear the DNC has complained about this being like totally unfair and unfunny and so they’re going to boycott all YouTubes forever. Also too, all the candidates are going to hold their breath until they turn blue.
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Hunkering down in Bizarroworld
by digby
National Memo’s Joe Conason notices that even some conservatives are stunned by the blatant lying by their presidential candidates:
To loud booing from the partisan audience, moderator Carl Quintanilla asked the soft-spoken neurosurgeon about his long and lucrative involvement with Mannatech, a nutritional supplement manufacturer that has been cited for false health claims for its “glyconutrients.” (How bad was Mannatech? Bad enough to provoke a fraud action brought by Greg Abbott, the former Texas attorney general who is now that state’s very conservative governor.)
“I didn’t have an involvement with [Mannatech],” retorted Carson. “That is total propaganda, and this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda.”
What Carson’s noisy fans probably didn’t know is that this was no “liberal media” setup. The doctor’s decade-long relationship with Mannatech – which turns out to have included a written contract, paid speeches, and a video endorsement on the company’s website – was exposed last year by Jim Geraghty of National Review, the flagship publication of American conservatism. Following the debate, Geraghty slammed Carson for “bald-faced lies” and “blatantly lying” about his relationship with the supplement firm.
Equally mendacious about his own personal history was Marco Rubio, who “won” the debate according to many observers. When Becky Quick of CNBC asked a predictable question about his checked financial affairs, which have included foreclosures, liquidations, phony expense accounts, and other embarrassments, the senator from Florida shot back: “You just listed a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents, and I’m not gonna waste 60 seconds detailing them all.”
Discredited attacks? Actually, Quick’s question was premised on facts that are not in dispute – as even Rubio himself acknowledged in his own campaign book. So frontally deceptive was his response that an outraged Joe Scarborough, his fellow Florida Republican, called him out on MSNBC’s Morning Joe the next day.
“Marco just flat-out lied to the American people there,” Scarborough complained. “And I was stunned that the moderators didn’t stop there and go, ‘Wait a second, these are court records. What are you talking about?…Becky was telling the truth, Marco was lying. And yet everybody’s going, ‘Oh, Marco was great.’ No, Marco lied about his financials.” Not incidentally, Rubio also lied about the effects of his tax plan, claiming his tax cuts would mostly benefit lower-income families when in fact its biggest benefits would accrue to the top one percent, as Republican tax schemes almost always do.
There’s more including Fiorina’s truly impressive latest contribution to the genre. And it’s not the Planned Parenthood whoppers.
It seems that even some members of the right wing are starting to see the problem with this post-modern epistemic relativism. It becomes very hard to keep track of reality. Even for them.
This has been coming on for a long time. They created their alternate media for the purpose of shaping public opinion in a way that favors them. And it’s gotten away from them. I don’t know how they put it back. Judging by their reaction to the Commie CNBC’s debate, it looks like their just going to hunker down in Bizarroworld. I don’t know how many people will want to live there with them.
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Speaking of the grift
by digby
This one is spectacular:
| CHQ’s Conservative Alert
Below please find a special message from one of our advertisers. |
| Are Obama and FEMA going to buy up all the survival food? Something just happened that explains why tons and tons of survival food are literally flying off warehouse shelves. The sad part is, that if everyone could see what I see, we’d have half a chance! They think having a food stockpile ready for a natural disaster is something they can put off for “someday” or “never”. As it stands right now, it’s going to be every man for himself! You’ve seen the evidence and you know the situation is way too serious not to do something about it. When a crisis hits, you’ll be ready. I can show you how to make sure you and your family are safe…. right here.  The fact is, if you don’t take action or if you stockpile the wrong foods, you could be setting your family up to be hungry in a time of crisis. It sounds harsh, but the truth is too many people with good intentions are making critical mistakes with their food stockpiles. Mistakes like…
Well, I decided to stop worrying. Obviously, waiting for the government to give me a handout in a disaster just wasn’t an option for me. And I was completely turned off by the crazy prices of survival food sold by most stores. So I got in touch with my buddy Frank and put my order in for his Food4Patriots survival food kits. This is Frank’s new line of survival food and there are 4 reasons why it’s literally flying off the shelves:
I want to make sure you don’t miss out on this because THIS is the #1 item you should be hoarding. You need to get ‘er done right now. Here’s why… If you don’t take action to get your food stockpile right now, you’ll be in the same boat as the brainwashed masses who think “everything is fine.” And if a crisis hits and your family asks, “What are we going to eat?” your mouth will go dry and you’ll feel powerless. But what if you decide right now to secure your food stockpile instead? Just imagine how much better you’ll feel right away. And if a crisis hits and your family asks, “What are we going to eat?” you’ll calmly reassure them that they’re safe and they will have plenty to eat. Listen, I can’t predict the future. I don’t know exactly when or how a crisis will hit. But from everything I see, it could be soon and it could be a big one. That’s why I really want you to get the same peace of mind that I do. >> Go grab your kit now before they’re all gone P.S. Got a call from Frank and you’ll never believe what 4-letter government agency just tried to buy up his entire supply of food! See proof in this shocking video. |
(Yes, that’s a real link to the shocking video.)
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Digging for dirt in the Benghazi trash
by digby
So Politico has gone through the latest batch of Clinton emails and they’ve published what they deem to be the 13 “must-read” emails in the bunch. (I believe there are 7,000 of them.)
Here’s one of them which gives the flavor of the type of information they believe the public needs to know:
In a January 2012 email from Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former top aide told Abedin that her son “said S [Secretary Clinton] looks like Lisa Kudrow! High praise indeed… pse pass it on.”
“Truly, Alexander, the younger, watched her walk in to Congress and said: ‘she looks like Lisa Kudrow —you know, on Friends….’,” she added.
Abedin then passed along the message to Clinton, writing, “This is a nice compliment[.] Lisa is an attractive actress!”
Clinton’s response is fully redacted.
Abedin’s response to that email: “[Redacted] certainly thinks you are cameron diaz!! [redacted]
There’s more stuff about her hair and Ben Affleck and Lady Gaga and how she doesn’t know how to make emojis for her Blackberry and properly use the fax machine. You know, all the essential stuff.
People give me grief for saying that the press is interested in the emails because they want to dig around in Clinton’s private life looking for tabloid dirt. I’ve been watching these people for a long time. This is what they do.
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The biggest grift of all
by digby
Nobody writes about the wingnut grift like Rick Perlstein. He’s got a piece up today about the biggest con of all:
Let’s take a look inside the tent. I noted a watershed some years ago. A National Review writer named Kevin Williamson wrote a worried dispatch in 2010 called “Goodbye, Supply Side.” He quoted Rep. Louie Gohmert, boasting (he really did!) about the economic policy triumphs of George W. Bush’s administration. Williamson: “After 9/11, [Gohmert] argues, the United States was headed for a serious recession, even a depression, but tax cuts saved the day––and increased government revenues in the process. ‘With a tax cut, then another tax cut, we stimulated the economy, and record revenue like never before in American history flowed into the United States Treasury,’ he said in a speech before the House. ‘As it turned out, the tax cuts helped create more revenue for the Treasury, not destroy revenue for the Treasury.’ That last bit is fantasy. There is no evidence that the tax cuts on net produced more revenue than the Treasury would have realized without them. That claim could be true—if we were to credit most or all of the economic growth during the period in question to tax cuts, but that is an awfully big claim, one that no serious economist would be likely to entertain. It’s a just-so story, a bedtime fairy tale Republicans tell themselves to shake off fear of the deficit bogeyman. It’s whistling past the fiscal graveyard. But this kind of talk is distressingly unremarkable in Republican political circles.”
I found this conservative’s daring foray into the reality-based community exhilarating. (How did it manage to slip by the National Review editors?) Three years after he wrote it, I tracked him down and asked what happened next: what ripple effects had come from his patient proof that Republican economic dogma was based on a fantasy?
“None,” he replied. Williamson then reflected upon further questioning that, well, some: certain Republican politicians admit privately that he is correct, but “it’s hard to get them to acknowledge it in public because it’s become such a piece of dogma.”
Fast forward to Wednesday’s “Your Money, Your Vote” Republican debate.
Governor George Pataki, in the “kiddie table” debate that preceded the main event: “My plan, the Tax Foundation said, would create five and a half million new jobs over the next decade.”
(The Tax Foundation is a former arm of the Koch Brothers’ Citizens for a Sound Economy, and exists to manipulate statistics to pretend that tax cuts produce unicorns and rainbows.)
Rick Santorum, on his flat tax proposal: “Well, if you look at a plan that I introduced, the 20/20 clear vision for America, we increased growth by 10 percent, 1 percent a year. So we go from 2.3 to 3.3.”
Moderator John Harwood, questioning Donald Trump about his tax plan: “You say it would not increase the deficit because [when] you cut taxes $10 trillion, the economy would take off like a rocket ship.” Trump: “Right. Dynamically.” Harwood: “I talked to economic advisers who served presidents of both parties. They said that you have as [much] a chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit as you would of flying away from the podium by flapping your arms.” Trump: “Then you have to get rid of Larry Kudlow, who sits on your panel, who’s a great guy, who came out one day and said, ‘I love Trump’s tax plan.’”
(Larry Kudlow, um, also exists to manipulate statistics to pretend that tax cuts produce lollypops and rainbows. Wikipedia: “Kudlow . . . served as an economic counsel to A.B. Laffer & Associates, the San Diego, California, company owned by Arthur Laffer, a major supply-side economist and creator of the Laffer Curve, an economic theory tying lower taxation to increased government revenue . . . . He was a member of the board of directors of Empower America, a supply-side economics organization founded in 1993 that merged with the Citizens for a Sound Economy to found FreedomWorks.”)
Dr. Carson on his other magic elixer, a flat-tax rate of 15 percent, after the moderator said it would leave a $1.1 trillion hole in the federal deficit: “We can stimulate the economy. That’s gonna be the real growth engine . . . when we put all the facts down, you’ll be able to see that it’s not true, it works out very well.”
(And also cures cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.)
Senator Cruz interjects: “Becky, if you want a 10 percent flat tax where the numbers add up, I rolled out my tax plan today. . . . The Tax Foundation . . . shows that this plan will allow the economy to generate 4.9 million jobs, to raise wages over 12 percent, and to generate 14 percent growth. . . . Those are the hard numbers.”
(Very hard numbers, considering the highest quarterly growth rate since World War II was 13.4 percent, in the fourth quarter of 1950.)
Jeb: “You don’t have to guess about it, because I actually have a record. Nineteen billion dollars of tax cuts, 1.3 million jobs created.”
There you have it. Step right up! Be amazed, be enchanted, by the magic GOP unicorn-and-rainbow-producing tax cut machine!
And for some reason those angry commies at CNBC failed to challenge them on any of it. Go figure.
There’s more. It’s great.
The Great Game revisited
by Tom Sullivan
Taking a break from domestic politics this morning to revisit the South China Sea. Back in June, we looked at the Chinese efforts to turn shoals and reefs in the Spratly Islands into toeholds in the middle of the important sea lane, a sort of Great Wall of Sand. While Americans focused on the stultifying spectacle of the Republican debate this week, on the other side of the planet, geopolitics rolls on. Or maybe, sails on.
American naval exercises near the Spratlys this week prompted a protest from the Chinese:
The USS Lassen guided-missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of at least one of the land formations claimed by China in the disputed Spratly Islands chain on Tuesday.
The move prompted the Chinese government to summon the US ambassador in Beijing and denounce what it called a threat to its sovereignty.
The US said after Thursday’s talks that the Chinese had expressed no desire to cancel scheduled visits by Chinese ships to a Florida port next week and that an upcoming visit to China by the commander of the US Pacific Command would still take place.
What for the US are “routine operations in the South China Sea in accordance with international law“, are for the Chinese illegal.
Foreign Policy explained the strategic importance of the South China Sea in 2011:
The South China Sea joins the Southeast Asian states with the Western Pacific, functioning as the throat of global sea routes. Here is the center of maritime Eurasia, punctuated by the straits of Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar. More than half the world’s annual merchant fleet tonnage passes through these choke points, and a third of all maritime traffic. The oil transported through the Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean, en route to East Asia through the South China Sea, is more than six times the amount that passes through the Suez Canal and 17 times the amount that transits the Panama Canal. Roughly two-thirds of South Korea’s energy supplies, nearly 60 percent of Japan’s and Taiwan’s energy supplies, and about 80 percent of China’s crude-oil imports come through the South China Sea. What’s more, the South China Sea has proven oil reserves of 7 billion barrels and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a potentially huge bounty.
States along the margins of the South China Sea have made competing claims for years to islands and archipelagos in the area, with China claiming an area (the “cow’s tongue”) that reaches far south of its southernmost province.
Image: Voice of America
The result is that all nine states that touch the South China Sea are more or less arrayed against China and therefore dependent on the United States for diplomatic and military support. These conflicting claims are likely to become even more acute as Asia’s spiraling energy demands — energy consumption is expected to double by 2030, with China accounting for half that growth — make the South China Sea the ever more central guarantor of the region’s economic strength. Already, the South China Sea has increasingly become an armed camp, as the claimants build up and modernize their navies, even as the scramble for islands and reefs in recent decades is mostly over. China has so far confiscated 12 geographical features, Taiwan one, Vietnam 25, the Philippines eight, and Malaysia five.
The New York Times Magazine visits “the world’s most surreal fishing camp,” the Phillipines’ ship Sierra Madre, essentially a derelict WWII tank-landing ship (originally named the U.S.S. Harnett County) that the Philippine government ran aground on the Ayungin shoal in 1999. This rusting outpost houses eight Filipino troops there to maintain their country’s toehold on a shoal now guarded by two Chinese Coast Guard vessels.
The Chinese “cabbage strategy” for this and other contested reefs and shoals “entails surrounding a contested area with so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that “the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage.”
At Ayungin, the Chinese can simply wait:
There can be no question that the cabbage strategy is in effect now at Ayungin and has been at least since May. General Zhang, in his interview several months ago, listed Ren’ai Shoal (the Chinese name for Ayungin) in the P.L.A.’s “series of achievements” in the South China Sea. He had already put it in the win column, even though eight Filipino marines still live there. He also seemed to take some pleasure in the strategy. Of taking territory from the Philippines, he said: “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water there. If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”
The New York Times Magazine piece contains multimedia clips that give sense of the remoteness and loneliness of these geopolitical standoffs on the other side of the world. The Wall Street Journal has this sketch of the dispute:
Watch this space.
Trick or treating at the big house
by digby
And the first dogs are, as always, awesome:
Via Huffington Post which reports that these are what you might get if you’re trick or treating at the White House tonight:
· A box of White House Hershey Kisses
· A White House Halloween Cookie
· A box of White House M&Ms
· Fruit Bars
· Kettle Corn
· Bo and Sunny baseball cards
· An assortment of candies
And the good news is that the kids can actually enjoy the homemade treats without everyone being paranoid that someone has slipped razor blades into the fruit bars. At least I assume that nobody would think that …
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QOTD: John Boehner
by digby
“He said, ‘Boehner, man, I’m gonna miss you,’ ” Boehner recalled in an interview broadcast Friday on Fox News.
“Yes you are Mr. President. Yes you are,” Boehner replied.
I think he’s right. The people who insist that Paul Ryan is Ayn Rand Jesus are kidding themselves.
By the way, he still blames the president for the grand Bargain falling apart. It isn’t true. The House wingnuts ruined that one. Thank goodness.
Crybaby quiz
by digby
I just cannot get over the GOP pearl clutching over this debate. It’s gone beyond parody now. Even some of the conservative pundits are starting to get a little bit embarrassed by the endless weeping and wailing. It’s not a good look.
The Fix put together a little quiz with some debate questions for all the debates we’ve had so far. You are supposed to guess which ones came from the CNBC horror show that no decent news network would ever be a part of and all the good debates where the moderators were very nice and respectful:
Remember this deep substantive question?
I got all those right because I sat through all of these debates. Every, last minute of them. So it didn’t seem to me that the CNBC debate was any more rude than the others. Because it wasn’t. They’re all like that. It’s just the Republicans are a bunch of whiny little crybabies who are trying to work the refs and play up their victimization for the whiny little crybabies who vote for them.
I’m hearing they’re thinking about having Glenn Beck and a couple of his associates moderate one of the upcoming debates.
Yes, he would have been executed in the US
by digby
No doubt about it:
It happens all the time. Our police are trained to shoot anyone who poses a threat. There are other ways. Of course.
Recall this post from a few months back:
The way we treat the mentally ill in this country is a crime
by digby
The Supreme Court ruled this week that police shooting an agitated schizophrenic woman is justified even if they could have stood outside in a hallway and left her alone in a room until more help arrived. The Justices felt that it was reasonable for them go bursting into the room and shoot her even though they had already been in there, had retreated and knew that she couldn’t harm anyone but herself.
The incident involving Sheehan started when social worker Heath Hodge believed Sheehan’s schizophrenia had deteriorated to “gravely disabled” after Sheehan stopped taking her medication, and called police for help transporting her to a mental health facility for involuntary commitment and treatment.
When police showed up at the San Francisco group home where Sheehan lived without a warrant, Sheehan “reacted violently,” wielding a knife and telling the officers she would kill them. In response, officers safely retreated to a hallway. “The officers called for backup,” the Ninth Circuit decision explained, “but rather than waiting for backup or taking other actions to maintain the status quo or de-escalate the situation, the officers drew their weapons and forced their way back into Sheehan’s room, presumably to disarm, subdue and arrest her, and to prevent her escape (although there do not appear to have been any means of escape available). Sheehan once again threatened the officers with a knife, causing the officers to shoot Sheehan five or six times.”
Sheehan argued that officers failed to reasonably accommodate her disability by “forcing their way back into her room without taking her mental illness into account and without employing tactics that would have been likely to resolve the situation without injury to herself or others.”
And expert witness Lou Reiter provided testimony that officers, in fact, did not follow that protocol at all. He said officers are trained not to agitate or excite individuals who are mentally ill, to “respect the person’s comfort zone, use nonthreatening communications and to employ the passage of time to their advantage.” He also cited materials used by the San Francisco Police Department that advise officers to request backup, to calm the situation, to communicate, to move slowly, to assume a quiet, nonthreatening manner, to take time to assess the situation and to “give the person time to calm down.”
“Reiter deemed the officers’ second entry into Sheehan’s home tactically unreasonable under those policies,” the lower court noted, finding that the officers should have awaited back-up and considered seeking a warrant.
In Monday’s opinion, the justices noted that whether the officers followed training protocol is not a factor in granting police officers what is known as “qualified immunity,” the broad federal protection that shields the police and other government entities from civil rights lawsuits.
“Considering the specific situation confronting Reynolds and Holder, they had sufficient reason to believe that their conduct was justified,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.
There is something called Crisis Intervention Team policing they can use. Some police departments are trying it. But mostly we just say they should shoot first and ask questions later.
H/t to TS