Month: October 2015

About that race for Speaker

by digby

Just checking in with wingnut central:

Robert Costa reported yesterday that Ryan was inclined to do it as long as he gets the Freedom Caucus on board. Looks like the grassroots right wingers are doing everything they can to make sure those FC’s don’t even think about it.

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Politico covers all the important dirty gossip

by digby

Yesterday they had this important expose:

The biggest national security threat to the United States is coming from inside the White House, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday.

Discussing President Barack Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Limbaugh blasted Obama’s comment that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server did not constitute a national security threat.

Obama told CBS’ Steve Kroft that Clinton “made a mistake” and “has acknowledged it.”
That, Limbaugh remarked, “is rich coming from Obama, because Obama is America’s
No. 1 national security problem, if you ask me.” Limbaugh went on to say that he is “not exaggerating” or “going for laughs here.”

“I really mean it,” he told listeners.
[…]
“I think Barack Obama’s our No. 1 national security problem or risk, whether by accident, by design,” he said. “I don’t know what else you’d call somebody who enables the Iranians to nuke up and then sees to it they end up with $150 billion to do with whatever they want, including buy new Boeing airliners and go out and sponsor terrorism in the Middle East.

I don’t know about you but I am stunned by this. Thank God Politico is bringing Limbaugh’s important insights to a larger public inside the beltway. People need to know about this.

Today, Via C&L, I see they have yet another super-scoop about The National Inquirer’s cover stating that Hillary Clinton has six months to live:

Stories about celebrities supposedly on the brink of death are well-worn territory for the supermarket rags. Even if most readers ignore them, the Enquirer has legitimately killed presidential campaigns before: Between 2007 and 2009 it broke open the story of John Edwards’ love-child, sinking the former senator’s White House ambitions while earning the erstwhile chronicler of alien sightings and two-headed cows the reluctant respect (and follow-up stories) of the establishment press.

Reached for comment, editor in chief Dylan Howard defended his paper’s Clinton coverage, pointing to the Enquirer’s history of airing the dirty laundry of politicians from Gary Hart to Bob Dole to Jesse Jackson.

“American voters deserve to know the truth about the health of Hillary Clinton given the questions that have been raised since 2012,” said Howard, adding that the Enquirer’s reporting “contradicts a letter her campaign released that attested Mrs. Clinton is in good health and fitness to serve as president. We believe that Mrs. Clinton should submit to an independent medical examination to clear the matter up once and for all.”

Politico helpfully goes on the recapitulate every bit of right wing gossip about the clearly decrepit Clinton’s age and health. It goes on and on and on.

This is Village journalism folks. They love them some nasty tabloid gossip and will use any excuse to wallow in its swill if they can.

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The Buena Vista Social Club gets a big WH welcome

by digby

This makes me happy. It was long overdue but thanks to President Obama’s YOLO approach to his lame duck term this ridiculous embargo is over.

Buena Vista Social Club will perform at The White House on Oct. 15. The Cuban music veterans, who after almost 20 years of touring the world are on their farewell Adios tour in the U.S., will appear at a party to be attended by international diplomats on the closing day of Hispanic Heritage month, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the White House Initiative of Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

There could not be a more perfect end of an era for the orchestra members, who could be called diplomats themselves. In 1997, the Buena Vista Social Club album, spearheaded by U.K. label World Circuit’s Nick Gold and produced by American Ry Cooder, did what it would take President Obama two more decades to achieve. It broke through the Cuban embargo, through music, reaching out and creating a relationship with the American people on a massive level.
[…]
Making history was not always easy. In 1998, Compay Segundo, the craggy country singer who emerged as the front man of the band, traveled to Miami with other Cuban musicians to perform at a Latin edition of the MIDEM music conference. The artists were received by Cuban exile protestors, and during the concert the hall had to be evacuated because of a bomb threat.

Segundo, who was 90 years old at the time, presided over a press conference with the skill of a seasoned statesman.

“I’m not anti-anybody,” he declared, chomping on a cigar, when asked about the Anti-Castro demonstrators. “Living with rancor embitters your life. And life is nothing to bitter about. Life is to enjoy, look at the landscape and the pretty women. That’s man’s life on this Earth. Anyone who spends their time doing something else, okay, [but] they won’t have much fun.”

I wonder if Senators Cruz and Rubio, both sons of right wing Cuban immigrants, will be protesting outside the White House. It wouldn’t surprise me.

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Whatever happened to Rand Paul?

by digby

I’d think this was kind of sad if it was anyone but Rand Paul:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) doesn’t seem to be having a lot of fun running for president.

The Kentucky senator live-streamed an entire day on the campaign trail on Tuesday, but things went a little awry when Paul answered questions that people had Googled about him.

Paul did not seem too amused when he answered those who used a Google search to ask whether he was still running for president.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be doing this dumbass live streaming if I weren’t. So yes, I still am running for president, get over it.”

“This is live, we can’t edit this right?” Paul continued.

Even though Paul’s campaign touted the live stream as a way to get behind-the-scenes access to Paul, the senator himself didn’t really seem to understand why it was being done.

Asked by a reporter why he was live-streaming the entire day, Paul said that he wasn’t quite sure.

“I wish I knew,” he said. “I’ve been saying, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this and now we’re doing this,” he said, according to The Washington Post.

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Two different Americas (and one is really scary)

by digby

I wrote about the debate for Salon this morning. I don’t have a strong opinion about who won and frankly I don’t care. Both Sanders and Clinton were impressive in my opinion. Mostly, it was just a relief to see that one of the political parties isn’t batshit insane. Sometimes you wonder.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

If there’s one thing that was made obvious last night, it’s that the GOP is one big heaping mess of a political party right now. The contrast between it and the Democrats couldn’t be sharper and not just in the presidential race. After all, the backdrop of last night’s event was a drama happening in the Capitol in which House Republicans can’t agree on who should be Speaker. How do they expect, then, to bring the entire country together under one president? It’s laughable. They’re laughable. The candidates on the stage last night in Las Vegas, on the other hand, were serious.

Now it’s true that there might have been some Republicans on their debate stage who aren’t entirely clownish and who, in other circumstances, could show themselves to better advantage. But it’s their party and they can’t cry about this even if they want to. Every last one of them has been instrumental in making the GOP what it is today. All of them would likely be happy to see Trump out of the race and most of them wouldn’t be sorry to see Carson go either. Every day, those two are out there spewing vile racist and anti-semitic rhetoric (among a dozen other offensive comments), making it almost impossible for the Republicans to gain a national majority and win the presidency — even if they could past the unpopularity of the mainstream GOP platform, which is only slightly less repellant.

The differences between the two parties aren’t just matters of debate style unfortunately. Now that we have seen the presidential candidates in both parties on the debate stage, it’s clear that the two parties don’t just have different political philosophies. They represent two different countries.

Republican America is a dystopian hellscape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while rapacious jackbooted government thugs try to wrestle our guns from our cold, dead fingers and Planned Parenthood sociopaths are committing mayhem on children and selling the body parts. And that’s just for starters.

Democratic America is a very powerful nation struggling with a declining middle class and economic insecurity at the hands of the ultra-rich, requiring some energetic government intervention to mitigate income inequality, solve the looming crisis of climate change and manage global crises without plunging the nation into more wars. They also must hold off that anarchistic opposition which sees the world as a dystopian hellscape and that may be the greatest challenge of all.

Did anyone else not miss Joe?
by Tom Sullivan

Candidates addressed issues. Moderators asked follow-up questions when they didn’t answer questions. Was that a debate I just saw?

A few favorite tweets from the debate (and one from before):

.@realDonaldTrump Glad you'll be watching. It's going to be "huge."— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 13, 2015

It was nice of Jim Webb, btw, to already drop out of the race in his first answer. #DemDebate— Cliff Schecter (@cliffschecter) October 14, 2015

Chaffee thinks he can reason with Wayne Lapierre. Isn't that cute? #DemDebate— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) October 14, 2015

Jim Webb seems like the candidate most likely to want you off his lawn. #DemDebate— God (@TheTweetOfGod) October 14, 2015

Quote of the Night — Sanders: "Congress doesn't regulate Wall Street, Wall Street regulates Congress." Huge applause. #DemDebate— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 14, 2015

Best moment:

No TKOs that I could see. Bernie had the best lines. Hillary performed like a pro, but was no rock star. O’Malley noticed nobody on stage slurred
women or minorities.

And the RNC?

These are the Google search spikes for the last 60 minutes. People definitely care about her damn emails. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/tTMqjteaCh— RNC (@GOP) October 14, 2015

Wonder how many Young Republicans or bots (same thing?) they used to produce that?

Debate drinking game words


by digby

I am hoping that tonight’s drinking game will end up making me drunk with shots called for the words “wealth inequality”, “background checks” “Planned Parenthood” “prison reform” and “Black Lives Matter”. Double shots for “expand social security” and “unconstitutional surveillance.”

I will, of course, be busy banging my head against the wall every time I hear the words “Benghazi” and “emails.”

Seriously, I think this will be a good debate.  It’s not the freakshow we see on the right so it’s never going to be as much fun, but it’s good for the country to that there are some serious people running for president who can have a statesmanlike debate about the issues facing America.  I know that’s not what the right wing of the GOP cares about. But I would guess that there are a lot of people who do.

So, enjoy! It may be dull but I’d guess it will be informative. Which is important!

Join me live tweeting on twitter machine at @digby56 if you’re so inclined… I’ll try not to shlur my wordshsss.

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It isn’t just the House, folks

by digby

I wrote about the latest event in the conservative crack-up for Salon today. Let’s just say the wingnuts are feeling their oats:

In 2012 when Mitt Romney picked Mr. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, as his running mate, the concern among some in their party was that Mr. Ryan was too conservative, particularly when it came to overhauling social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

Now, as he agonizes over whether to answer the appeal of his colleagues to become their next speaker, the far right is trotting out a fresh concern: Mr. Ryan is too far left.

For years, establishment Republicans in Washington have gotten away with giving lip service to our principles while supporting policies that betrayed those same principles. NEVER AGAIN! Since the Republicans took the majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell has cut deal after deal with the Democrats. His record of betraying conservatives before the election has only increased after the election.

Consider that, in this year alone, he:

Forcefully defeated the valiant efforts of Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz to defund Obamacare.

Failed to support Senator Mike Lee’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of their body parts trafficking scandal.

Helped Harry Reid block a vote on an amendment offered by Ted Cruz that would have prevented lifting sanctions on Iran unless and until Iran recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and unless and until Iran releases American hostages.

Allowed Senator Harry Reid and the Democrats to pass an amendment that reauthorized the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) – as a reward the lobbyists on K Street and undeniable corporate welfare. This action was so egregious that Ted Cruz boldly took to the Senate floor and called out Senator McConnell for lying.

Was referred to by George Stephanopoulos as President Obama’s “point man” in the Senate; and

Received a hand-written note of thanks from Barack Obama for his role in the confirmation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch – the number one cheerleader for unbridled Presidential power.

We MUST let Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell know that his scheming and backhanded tactics will NOT go unchecked.

And lookie here:

McConnell now quietly threatening to default on the debt if Obama doesn’t agree to social security cuts: http://t.co/nINQfSBXbt

— Zach Carter (@zachdcarter) October 13, 2015

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“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman”

by digby

TI has now apologized for making this remark:

“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman,” he said. “Just because, every other position that exists, I think a woman could do well. But the president? It’s kinda like, I just know that women make rash decisions emotionally – they make very permanent, cemented decisions – and then later, it’s kind of like it didn’t happen, or they didn’t mean for it to happen. And I sure would hate to just set off a nuke. [Other leaders] will not be able to negotiate the right kinds of foreign policy; the world ain’t ready yet. I think you might be able to the Lochness Monster elected before you could [get a woman].”

But really, should he apologize for saying out loud what many men believe? He’s a little unusual in that he’s African American and they tend to like Hillary Clinton a lot more than white men do. But still, it’s not something we don’t hear all the time. For instance, look at this article from National JOurnal which points out that Clinton has a huge problem with men that she’s going to have to overcome if she wants to win. White men really don’t like her at all:

When Hil­lary Clin­ton entered the pres­id­en­tial race, she ex­pec­ted to win over­whelm­ing sup­port among wo­men in her bid to be­come the first fe­male pres­id­ent. In­stead, she’s find­ing out that an un­pre­ced­en­ted level of res­ist­ance to her can­did­acy among men is un­der­min­ing the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that she’d be the strongest Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Put an­oth­er way: Clin­ton is now nearly as un­pop­u­lar with men as Don­ald Trump is with wo­men.

That’s say­ing something.

The latest round of polling for Clin­ton is bru­tal. This week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al/Mar­ist sur­vey in Iowa shows her fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ing with men at a mere 27 per­cent, while two-thirds view her un­fa­vor­ably. Her minus-39 net fa­vor­ab­il­ity with men is 28 points worse than Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden and 27 points be­hind Sen. Bernie Sanders. The story is the same in New Hamp­shire, where the NBC/WSJ/Mar­ist poll found both Sanders and Biden with net-pos­it­ive rat­ings, while Clin­ton’s ap­prov­al is deeply un­der­wa­ter, stuck at 30 per­cent.

The swing-state polling is a mir­ror im­age of her na­tion­al num­bers. Last week, Quin­nipi­ac found Clin­ton’s neg­at­ive rat­ings with white men at a stun­ning 72 per­cent—sig­ni­fic­antly worse than the Demo­crat­ic Party’s already-ser­i­ous struggles with that demo­graph­ic group.

It’s possible that this discrepancy is because of her positions on foreign policy where they are much more dovish than she is. Or maybe it’s about her positions on the TPP. Or maybe it’s mostly what TI said, it’s impossible to know.

But I am also skeptical that she can win because of this phenomenon. If enough women went the other way she might be able to, but there are a whole lot of Republican women who will vote for the Republican (just as Democratic women would vote for the Democratic male if a GOP woman was on the ticket.) This is about Democratic men. One assumes they would vote for her against a Republican. But it’s a gamble. After all, we don’t have a lot of data to go on. No woman has ever been a presidential nominee of one of the two major parties.

I had to chuckle at this article though. It doesn’t even bother with an aside about the gender gap possibly being about gender except to the extent that Clinton has made a huge error is trying to appeal to women — as if their votes don’t count.

It’s aw­fully iron­ic that some of the Demo­crat­ic Party’s sharpest strategists, who once saw Clin­ton as uniquely cap­able of mo­bil­iz­ing the Demo­crat­ic base be­cause of her ground­break­ing bio­graphy, are now hedging their bets—by look­ing at the 72-year-old Biden as a more-cred­ible can­did­ate cap­able of stop­ping the party’s prob­lems with men.

Ironic isn’t the word I’d choose. Predictable is more like it. White men are getting sick of all this nonsense. The smart money is with that macho dude Wayne LaPierre on this one:

“I have to tell you, eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.”

It seems there are a lot of men who think it’s time to get back to normal.

None of that should b construed as a slam on Biden. I don’t believe that’s his calculation. He’s the VP who has a chance to be president and that could be true no matter who was running. Neither is it wrong for any individual, male or female, to prefer Sanders on ideological grounds. That’s what primaries are all about. But there are plenty of people in the Village and in the country, like this reporter, who simply don’t even consider that there might be an underlying phenomenon that’s worth questioning as anything but a failure on the part of women to overcome sexism.

The Democratic men who see it this way might want to look at this through the lens of the Obama administration being held responsible for failing to force Republicans to stop being congressional anarchists. I think any knowledgeable liberal can see what a useless, biased analysis that is.

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“It could happen”

by digby

This Colbert is just … so perfect:

Honestly, the desperation among these people to not have to pay attention to a debate about politics is palpable. Trump has spoiled them.

If you’re wondering if he’s exaggerating check out this tweet from today:

Reid on Biden showing up tonight: “No. Joe won’t be here.”

— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) October 13, 2015

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