Month: November 2015

Just don’t call it a crusade

by digby

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz:

‘This Will Be Coming to America’

Islamic State “plans to bring these acts of terror to America,” Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz says on Fox News.

Cruz says plan to bring “tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees” to U.S. — which he attributes to President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton — “is nothing less than lunacy”

“Those who are fleeing persecution should be resettled in the Middle East in majority-Muslim countries. Now on the other hand, Christians who are being targeted for genocide, for persecution, Christians who are being beheaded or crucified — we should be providing safe haven to them,” Cruz says

This sounds very normal to people who believe that the US was founded as a “Christian nation.”

Ted Cruz’s SuperPAC is run by David Barton, the charlatan historian who has been selling these lies to conservative Christians for years.

.

Class acts


by digby

Tbogg helpfully gathered some of the most offensive tweets from last night and put them in one place.  I’ve reproduced some of them here:

Here’s one he missed and it’s the scariest of them all:

Scarier still:

The Donald may have bee feeling some heat from his wild “Carson’s belt-buckle” performance the other night but I’m going to guess that’s all forgotten now and his other comment saying he would “bomb the shit out of ISIS” sounds very good to these people.

Why am I talking about any of this? Because:

Update: Forgot one

Monsters, Intl.
by Tom Sullivan

Newt: My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones – but there are.

Newt: … they mostly come at night. Mostly.

France is in a state of shock this morning in the wake of a near-simultaneous rolling attacks at six different Paris locations Friday night by gunmen and suicide bombers. The situation is still fluid and details are coming in by the moment. More than 120 have been killed and dozens are in critical condition in hospitals. The latest word as I write this is that the Islamic State claims responsibility. That claim is unverified. The identity and nationality of the attackers as well as victims is still being investigated.

Paris, great newspaper town w/so many courageous journalists, has experienced horror. Here are today's front pages. pic.twitter.com/UrF04hzwgg— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) November 14, 2015

Some early reporting will turn out to be nonsense, as usual. Germany claims to have arrested a man from Montenegro last week who was found with machine guns and explosives in his car. A Bavarian police spokesman called claims of a link to the Paris attacks “pure media speculation.” The detainee refuses to speak in prison. French police claim one of the Paris suicide bombers was carrying a Syrian passport. Perhaps he bought a 5-day City Pass to the terrorist attack too?

French President Francois Hollande called the attacks “an act of war” in a public statement:

Hollande blamed the carnage on what he called “a terrorist army, the Islamic State group, a jihadist army, against France, against the values that we defend everywhere in the world, against what we are: a free country that means something to the whole planet.”

Amidst the carnage, statements and symbols of solidarity from across the world:

When the City of Lights goes dark, the world lights up in support🇫🇷 #ParisAttacks #PrayersForParis pic.twitter.com/scTgIhyLA8— Sarah Mattison (@SarahMatt97) November 14, 2015

And the usual trolls were out last night in the United States. Mother Jones collected a series from Twitter. Not all of the monsters carry guns and suicide vests. Some wield weaponized stupidity:

How's that Syrian refugee resettlement look now? How about that mass migration into Europe? Terrorism is alive & well in the world. #No— Rep. Jeff Duncan (@RepJeffDuncan) November 14, 2015

Um, the refugees are fleeing Syria to get away from this kind of violence. But then, I make sense. Sorry.

Sen. Ted Cruz found time to talk tough with a statement worthy of Sarah Palin:

We must make it crystal clear that affiliation with ISIS and related terrorist groups brings with it the undying enmity of America—that it is, in effect, signing your own death warrant.

Yuppers, that will have them quaking in their suicide vests.

Saving the whales

by digby

Start ’em young:

.

The only thing they believe government should regulate is the inside of a woman’s body

by digby

The Supreme Court will be hearing a major abortion case this term:

After declining to take a major abortion case since 2007, the justices will revisit the court’s 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which determined that states could impose some restrictions on abortion as long as they did not pose an undue burden on women seeking the procedure. Undue burden was defined as “a state regulation that has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”

Since then, dozens of states have imposed restrictions on abortion access, from mandatory waiting periods and ultrasounds, to building code requirements similar to those for outpatient surgical facilities to requiring providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. A ruling in the Texas case would be only the second time since Casey that the high court has reviewed such limits.

Texas argues that it has a well-established right to regulate medical facilities and providers and that the regulations are in the interest of women’s health.

The abortion clinics that brought the suit argue that the law is designed to make it harder to get a medical procedure that is legal, effectively regulating clinics out of existence.

It is obvious to any sentient being that the reason for these onerous clinic regulations has nothing to do with caring about the quality of care and everything to do with making it impossible for the clinics to operate. And yet some courts are willing to wink and nod at these spurious schemes because they agree with the outcome. If you want to know why people are cynical about our judicial system this is why.

QOTD: Rand Paul

by digby

Rand wants to debate Bernie Sanders:

“See Bernie… he says, ‘Oh, I believe in a benign form of socialism, democratic socialism.’ But here’s the problem—if a majoritarian takes away your rights, it’s not any different or less bad than an authoritarian taking away your rights.”

“We had this debate over whether majorities were correct a long time ago when we had Jim Crow laws. In the south, legislatures, majorities passed laws saying segregation, separate-but-equal was O.K. So they discriminated against a whole group of people in America. But that was a majority. A majority is not always right, and I think that you have rights that come from your creator that precede government that can not, should not, and must not be taken away from you by a majority, and I really, really object to Bernie’s understanding of what rights are.”

Yeah, Rand has a different understanding of what rights are for sure:

SIEGEL: You’ve said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

D: What I’ve always said is that I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I’ve been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.

SIEGEL: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

D: Well, actually, I think it’s confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I’m in favor of. I’m in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there’s a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven’t really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn’t been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we’re going to vote for the Civil Rights Act.

SIEGEL: But it’s been one of the major developments in American history in the course of your life. I mean, do you think the ’64 Civil Rights Act or the ADA for that matter were just overreaches and that business shouldn’t be bothered by people with a basis in law to sue them for redress?

D: Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.

FWIW, I’d like to see Rand Paul and Bernie sanders debate too. Sanders doesn’t seem interested and for good reason. He has a viable presidential campaign and he’s busy. He doesn’t need to stage a sideshow. Paul’s candidacy is moribund. He has nothing better to do.

.

Ask Rush what they really think

by digby

This Marco Rubio interview with Rush Limbaugh from April 2013 is fascinating. Rubio was selling the gang of eight CIR bill all over conservative radio at the time and Rush was not impressed. It’s worth reading the whole thing to understand what the right thought at the time about what he was selling. Here’s an excerpt:

RUSH: And we’re back on the Rush Limbaugh program with Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, and we’re talking about the upcoming legislation involving immigration. Senator, I know you say that the political aspects of this are not yours, but so many people are scared to death, Senator, that the Republican Party is committing suicide, that we’re going to end up legalizing nine million automatic Democrat voters, and that’s why the Democrats are so adamant. We don’t understand why the Republicans are so eager to make that happen. We seem to be wanting to reach out to Hispanics. Once we do everything we do to reach out to Hispanics, how can we ever reform welfare? How can we reform anything that we might want to change if it’s the product of reaching out to Hispanics, giving them what we think they want in order to get their votes, when they’re already gonna vote Democrat?

RUBIO: Well, a couple things I would say about that. First of all, I’m not prepared to admit that somehow there’s this entire population of people that because of their heritage are not willing to listen to our pitch on why limited government is better. As I said at the outset, this is an argument that right now unfortunately I think we are losing in many sectors of our society. We have young people that have somehow grown up, and we can chalk it up to what the schools are teaching or they’re seeing in the mass media, but people who have grown up to believe that government is the source of prosperity. That the way to grow our economy is for the government to spend more.

That’s always been a challenge ’cause it’s a lot easier to sell people on a government program than it is to sell ’em on free enterprise and limited government. It’s easier to promise that that’s for sure, but I think the evidence is on our side. Once we explain to people the reality of this, I think we can convince anyone, certainly I think we can convince a lot of people in America. I think the future of conservatism, and, in fact, I think the future of America depends on how effective we are at explaining to as many Americans as possible why the road we are on right now is such an economic disaster, and I just refuse to accept the notion that somehow we’re not gonna be able to make that argument successfully to Hispanics.

I imagine in places like California and New York, where there’s a large segment of Hispanics that also happen to live in very liberal communities, it will probably be a heavier lift. But in places like Florida, Texas, Virginia, and other places throughout the country, where there’s a growing Hispanic population not tied to these traditional centers of liberalism, I think we have a very compelling story to tell. The evidence shows that Hispanics are heavily entrepreneurial. And I know this. The more taxes people pay, the more that they own, the more they have at stake in the economy, the more conservative and more limited government they become, and I’ve seen that with my own eyes.

RUSH: Well, I have, too, within certain years, certain eras of this country’s history. We’re not in the era like that now. We’re in an era where seemingly more people are low-information than ever before and are more susceptible — Senator, look at the number of people not working. I mean, 90 million people are not working. But they’re all eating, they’ve all got phones, they’ve all got TV sets and so forth. They are being supported. They are able to live sufficiently well enough that getting a job is not that important, not nearly as important. It’s a cultural thing that’s happening here.

Rush wasn’t buying Rubio’s view that Hispanics are entrepreneurial and hard working. He just doesn’t believe it. And neither do Republican voters. If they like Rubio and Cruz, they also believe that they are the only “good ones” the same way Ben Carson and Tim Scott are the only “good” African Americans.

Rubio could certainly be elected, and even elected largely on the basis of his ethnicity. Republicans want to be able to vote for ethnic and racial minorities. But they do not want them to do anything for “the bad ones” — which is 99% of them.

.

.

Ben Carson and his secret sources

by digby

Ben Carson says his sources on Syria are better than the White House

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson fired back Friday at President Obama and the White House for dismissing his claims that China is moving into Syria, saying his sources are clearly better than those of the U.S. government.

“I have several sources that I’ve got material from, I’m surprised my sources are better than theirs,” he told reporters after a town hall when asked about the claims.

Carson also said his campaign would release more information about his foreign policy plans by the end of the weekend.

I’m breathless with anticipation.

In case you are wondering what Carson’s sources are, perhaps this will clear it up:

Marco and Ted’s excellent adventure

by digby

This story got buried because of the Trump lunacy but I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

Rubio’s parents were born in Cuba, and he spoke movingly about their experience as immigrants. But Rubio was also beloved by the very sort of small-government conservatives who had blocked immigration reform in the past. With a foot in both those worlds, Rubio held enormous leverage, even with the veteran senators.

That was clear in one meeting, described by four lobbyists in the room, where the GOP senators were being asked to agree to more “guest workers” in the bill. Without more of these temporary immigrants, the lobbyists said, some low-skill jobs would go unfilled. McCain, they said, suggested an answer. Couldn’t the children of illegal immigrants do those jobs?

Rubio, the son of immigrants, spoke up. “He says, ‘Pardon me, Senator, but I have to say that the children of those illegal immigrants will be doctors and lawyers,’ ”one lobbyist recalled. “In my mind, I was like, ‘Thank God somebody said it.’ Because nobody else could say that to McCain.” […] “People would talk, talk, talk. And he’d say, ‘I can’t sell that.’ And that would be it,” one Democratic staffer recalled. If Rubio said that conservatives wouldn’t go for a particular idea, the group believed him.

There’s more at the link. This battle between Cruz and Rubio isn'[t quite a sexy as the one between Trump and Carson but it may be more important in the long run.

The beginning of the crack-up?

by digby

Trump went off last night in a way that’s even more creepy than usual. If you haven’t seen this yet take the time. And contemplate the fact that members of the party are thinking he might go all the way

Here’s that story from the Washington Post about the GOP panic. It’s awesome:

Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands.

The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.

In normal times, the way forward would be obvious. The wannabes would launch concerted campaigns, including television attack ads, against the ­front-runners. But even if the other candidates had a sense of what might work this year, it is unclear whether it would ultimately accrue to their benefit. Trump’s counterpunches have been withering, while Carson’s appeal to the base is spiritual, not merely political. If someone was able to do significant damage to them, there’s no telling to whom their supporters would turn, if anyone.

“The rest of the field is still wishing upon a star that Trump and Carson are going to ­self-destruct,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a former adviser to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. But, he said, “they have to be made to self-destruct. . . . Nothing has happened at this point to dislodge Trump or Carson.”

Fehrnstrom pointed out that the fourth debate passed this week without any candidate landing a blow against Trump or Carson. “We’re about to step into the holiday time accelerator,” he said. “You have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, then Iowa and a week later, New Hampshire, and it’s going to be over in the blink of an eye.”
[…]
For months, the GOP professional class assumed Trump and Carson would fizzle with time. Voters would get serious, the thinking went, after seeing the outsiders share a stage with more experienced politicians at the first debate. Or when summer turned to fall, kids went back to school and parents had time to assess the candidates. Or after the second, third or fourth debates, certainly.

None of that happened, of course, leaving establishment figures disoriented. Consider Thomas H. Kean Sr., a former New Jersey governor who for most of his 80 years has been a pillar of his party. His phone is ringing daily, bringing a stream of exasperation and confusion from fellow GOP power brokers.

“People usually start off in the same way: Pollyanna-ish,” Kean said. “They assure me that Trump and Carson will eventually fade. Then we’ll talk some more, and I give them a reality check. I’ll say, ‘The guy in the grocery store likes Trump. So does the guy who cuts my hair. They’re probably going to stick with him. Who knows if this ends?’ ”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, herself an outsider who rode the tea party wave into office five years ago, explained the phenomenon.

“You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’ ”

Before Tuesday’s debate in Milwaukee, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had a reception at the Pfister Hotel with party leaders, donors and operatives. There was little appetite for putting a political knife in the back of either Trump or Carson, according to one person there. Rather, attendees simply hoped both outsiders would go away.

There are similar concerns about Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is gaining steam and is loathed by party elites, but they are more muted, at least for now.
[…]
“To have a leading candidate propose a new federal police force that is going to flush out illegal immigrants across the nation? That’s very disturbing and concerning to me about where that leads Republicans,” said Dick Wadhams, a former GOP chairman in Colorado, a swing state where Republicans are trying to pick up a Senate seat next year.

Said Austin Barbour, a veteran operative and fundraiser now advising former Florida governor Jeb Bush: “If we don’t have the right [nominee], we could lose the Senate, and we could face losses in the House. Those are very, very real concerns. If we’re not careful and we nominate Trump, we’re looking at a race like Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, getting beat up across the board because of our nominee.”

George Voinovich, a retired career politician who rose from county auditor to mayor of Cleveland to governor of Ohio to U.S. senator, said this cycle has been vexing.

“This business has turned into show business,” said Voinovich, who is backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “We can’t afford to have somebody sitting in the White House who doesn’t have governing experience and the gravitas to move this country ahead.”

As ye sow so shall ye reap, dudes. This is the party you’ve built — exalting rich jokers and religious hucksters has a price.

My favorite thing in the article (which you should read in full) are the Big Money Boyz all confused about how to deal with this. They think it’s all about money. It isn’t.

.