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Month: January 2016

Uncanny bitter clinger

Published by digby on January 24, 2016

Uncanny bitter clinger

by digby

Tina Fey channels Palin. It’s so close it’s kind of freaky.

The problem for Fey is that this is not really a parody because you can’t actually parody her.

Here’s a quote from Palin’s actual endorsement:

“You quit footin’ the bill for these nations who are oil-rich, we’re payin’ for some of their “squirm-ishes” that have been goin’ on for centuries where they’re fightin’ each other, callin’ Allah Akbar, callin’ jihad on each other’s heads forever and ever. Like I said before, let ’em duke it out and let Allah sort if out!”

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Martyrs without a cause

Published by digby on January 24, 2016

Martyrs without a cause

by digby

These goodbye cruel world videos are too much:

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Prayers!Posted by Adrian Sewell on Thursday, January 21, 2016

He was the first rancher to tear up his federal grazing contract in this ceremony yesterday apparently:

The leader of an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge in Oregon plans to have a ceremony Saturday for ranchers to renounce federal ownership of public land and tear up their federal grazing contracts.

Midday on Saturday, a small counter-protest gathered on an overlook about five miles from the refuge, chanting for the group to go home.

Kieran Seckling with the Center for Biological Diversity said the leaders of the armed group want to “stage another occupancy like this and to terrorize those towns the same way they have terrorized burns. There’s no town in the west that wants to be the next Burns.”

About 40 people gathered for the counter-protest around 1 p.m. in bitter wind and sleet.

Katie Fite from Boise, Idaho, called the occupiers bullies and said their action could give rise to other hate-filled efforts to take over public lands.

On Friday, Ammon Bundy met briefly with a federal agent as authorities attempt to resolve the three-week old standoff over federal land policies, but Bundy left because the agent wouldn’t talk with him in front of the media.

The short meeting occurred as Oregon officials are putting increased pressure on federal authorities to take action against Bundy’s group.

On Thursday, Bundy went to the airport in Burns, where the FBI has set up a staging area, and spoke to an FBI negotiator over the phone. They agreed to speak again Friday, but Bundy left the airport shortly after he arrived because the FBI agent he spoke with said federal authorities wanted any conversation to be private.

Bundy wants face-to-face conversations in front of reporters. “I really don’t think, at this point, even having another phone conversation here without him would be beneficial,” Bundy said before leaving Friday.

More on the “protest” here.

Falling in love again by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 24, 2016

Falling in love again
by Tom Sullivan


By Alan Light (Own work by the original uploader) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or
CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

It is a cliché by now, the observation Bill Clinton once attributed to a friend, “In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line.” But being a cliché does not mean it isn’t true. Mostly. To their great chagrin, the GOP’s base seems to cheating on them by falling in love with Donald Trump.

A flurry of articles in the last 10 days have pointed out both Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ weaknesses as candidates. They also have their strengths. Those are worth debating on their merits (without rancor, please). But as the cliché suggests, what many don’t acknowledge they really want in an elected leader is a soul mate. As Seinfeld would say, not that there’s anything wrong with that. If that’s what you really want. (Cue Mick Jagger.)

I saw this phenomenon up close at ScruHoo when Heath Shuler ran for re-election in 2010. Progressive readers in the Cesspool of Sin by then had had enough of our Blue Dog and cited a catalog of sins for which they would never forgive him (and certainly would never again vote for him). I got curious. A few weeks later I posted:

After the lively discussion on the NC-11 House race a couple of weeks back, I compiled and researched some of the votes commenters cited to make their cases for or against voting for Shuler this November. (The list includes a few others I remembered.) Votes here are for final passage, unless noted. See http://thomas.loc.gov/

“Key votes” are in the eye of the beholder. Your mileage may vary.

Key House Votes Against Party

– HR3 / S5 Stem Cell Research Act of 2007, Passed anyway
– HR3685 Sexual Orientation Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), 2007, Passed anyway
– H Res 1031 Establishment of the Office of Congressional Ethics, 2008, Passed anyway
– HR1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“Stimulus Bill”), Passed anyway
– HR1913 Hate Crimes Expansion, 2009, Passed anyway
– HR2749 Food Safety Regulation Amendments, 2009, Passed anyway
– H.AMDT.509 to HR 3962, 2010 (Stupak Amendment), 64 Democrats joined Republicans in adding Stupak amendment to Affordable Health Care bill, 240-194
– HR3962, 2010 Affordable Health Care for America Act, Passed anyway
– HR4213 Unemployment Benefits Extension, 2010, Passed anyway
– HR4872 Health Care Reconciliation Act, 2010, Passed anyway
– HR5618 Unemployment Benefits Extension, 2010, Passed anyway

Key House Votes With Party

– HR800 Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, Passed
– HR985 Whistleblower Protection Act of 2007, Passed
– HR2831 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, Passed
– HR6124 Second Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007 (Farm Bill), Passed
– HR2642 G.I. Bill Expansion and Other Domestic Provisions, 2008, Passed
– HR 5749 Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008, Passed
– HR 6867 Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008, Passed
– HR2 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (SCHIP), Passed
– HR627 Credit CARD Act of 2009, Passed
– HR 1106 / S896 Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, Passed
– HR1586 Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act, 2009, Passed
– HR1728 Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, 2009, Passed
– HR2454 Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Cap and Trade), Passed
– HR 3548 Extending Federal Emergency Unemployment Benefits, 2009, Passed
– HR4173 The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, Passed

OpenCongress.org finds that Rep. Heath Shuler votes with his party 85% of the time.

Almost to a one, the complainants got the bills they wanted passed passed. What they obsessed over were the times they felt betrayed when, for whatever reason, their Democrat didn’t vote their way on some key vote. (It’s a conservative district; Pelosi gave him a pass?) In spite of the fact that they got what they wanted legislatively, they wouldn’t let it go. Because what they really want in a representative is a soul mate. In spite of the fact that Shuler voted (to that point) 85% of the time with the caucus and his Republican predecessor, Charlie Taylor, would have voted +/- 0%, people wouldn’t take winning for an answer. Their soul mate had hurt them.

This is politics. If you want a soul mate, try Match dot com.

Yes, the contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton has gotten heated. But as David Roberts writes, “the differences between them pale next to their shared differences with any Republican in the race.” He observes at Vox:

In 2016, barring some truly disruptive political event (which, who knows, Trump may prove to be), Republicans are going to keep control of the House of Representatives. They may keep control of the Senate as well, though that’s less certain, but all they need to block any hope of an expansive legislative agenda is the House, something Obama has learned over and over again.

So there will be no single-payer health care, no national carbon tax, no free college, no reparations. Given the current disposition of the Republican Party, it will be a miracle if regular-order business like budgets and debt ceiling bills can get through — if the government can keep functioning at all.

On legislation, the next Democratic president (if there is one) will mostly play defense, using the filibuster or, if necessary, the veto pen.

What progress there is on domestic policy will come from inventive, assertive use of executive power and smart appointments, both judicial and administrative.

One hopes there will be legislative movement on climate change and improvements to health care, etc. But I agree with Roberts that the next Democratic presidency “will mostly be a rearguard battle.” Anymore, Republicans view any Democrat in the White House as illegitimate. So here’s what matters to me most going into 2016: protecting the Supreme Court from Republican appointees who would dismantle women’s rights, minority rights, and voting rights over the next 30 years. Either Sanders or Clinton would prevent that as president. Their other differences are trifles compared to that.

Currently, Mark Meadows, the T-party Republican House architect of the government shutdown, represents NC-11.

Of Wang Chung & Wing Chun: All Things Must Pass & Ip Man 3 by Dennis Hartley

Published by digby on January 24, 2016
Saturday Night at the Movies


Of Wang Chung &Wing Chun: All Things Must Pass (***) & Ip Man 3 (**½)

By Dennis Hartley



The first time I visited L.A. was in 1975, while still living in Alaska. I went with a friend, a fellow music geek who had grown up there. He introduced me to his “holy trinity” of record stores: Rhino on Westwood Boulevard, Aron’s on Melrose, and Mecca…a/k/a/ Tower Records on the Strip. I went absolutely ape shit (I remember flying back with about 150 LPs in tow). We didn’t have record stores like that in Fairbanks. Especially Tower, whose legend had loomed large in my mind (the import section alone-good god!).


In 1979, I moved to San Francisco for a couple years, where I developed my own “holy trinity”, including Rasputin (which required an excursion to Berkeley via BART), Aquarius in the Castro, and the Tower in North Beach. By the time I moved to Seattle in 1992, vinyl was pretty much on its way out, and the birth of Napster in 1999 assured that the CD would soon join the LP on its long slow death march. One by one, I watched my favorite independent record stores bite the dust, which was sad, but it was only once Seattle’s two Tower stores went belly up in 2006 that it truly felt like the “end of an era”.


Granted, by the time of its demise Tower had become somewhat “corporatized” (for wont of a better term), with worldwide franchising and over 90 stores across the U.S., but there was something about the vibe of the stores (at least the ones I visited) that made music geeks feel warm and fuzzy (notwithstanding the occasional judgmental clerk…but then that was part of the fun, and par for the course at any record store that was worth its salt).

That legacy (as well as that “vibe”) is the subject of All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records, a genial (if unremarkably executed) 2015 documentary by Colin Hanks, just out on DVD and Blu-ray. Hanks begins in the early 1960s, when founder Russell Solomon opened his first modest store in Sacramento, then eventually added the now iconic San Francisco and L.A. locations (in 1968 and 1970, respectively), ushering in the chain’s golden era in the 70s and 80s. However, as the title implies, nothing lasts forever; so Hanks also documents Tower’s slow, sad slide into the cut-out bins of history.

Solomon (pushing 90 and still pretty spry) is on hand to reminisce, as well as some of his former business partners. You do get a fairly good picture of the company’s unique management culture, which took a sort of anti-management approach (let’s just say that it was the 70s, these folks loved to party…and leave it at that). Several music luminaries also share their anecdotes, most notably Sir Elton John, who went through a period where he would obsessively hit the Sunset Strip store every morning at 9am to check out the latest releases (this isn’t mentioned in the film, but he had a legendarily huge private music collection of 70,000 LPs, 45s, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs and unique studio tapes, which he sold at Sotheby’s a few years ago to help raise money for his AIDS foundation).


Those of a certain persuasion (borderline OCD music collectors) and/or of a certain age (ahem, twice) may tend to get more misty-eyed toward the end of the doc than the average viewer. Again, it is not the most dynamically produced film, but its heart is in the right place. And if you miss the ritual of pawing through those bins, ogling the cover art and skimming the liner notes and track listing on the back, all the while breathing in that singularly intoxicating bouquet of shrink wrap and petroleum product-feel free to browse.





You know what they say-everybody has to start somewhere. Bruce Lee was no exception; he had a mentor, a gentleman known as Ip Man, who was a master in a Shaolin martial arts discipline called Wing Chun. Hong Kong director Wilson Yip’s new film, Ip Man 3, marks his third installment in a franchise dramatizing specific periods of Master Ip’s life.


Donnie Yen (Dragon Inn, Iron Monkey ) returns in the eponymous role. The story is set in 1959, which was the year (at least as dramatized in the film…Wiki begs to differ) a young and cocky Bruce Lee (Danny Chan) first approaches Master Ip and expresses his desire to become his disciple. But apparently, he’s just not “fast” enough yet (like I said-everybody has to start somewhere). After this brief interaction in the opening scene, the Bruce Lee character drops from the story (unless I wasn’t paying close enough attention).

Keeping Bruce Lee in the story might have propped things up; otherwise you’re left with a standard genre pic, with Ip Man taking on an ambitious, mobbed-up property developer (Mike Tyson…yes, that Mike Tyson) who has built up a network of surly youth gangs to intimidate, terrorize, and generally soften up the locals so that they will become more pliant. Thankfully, Tyson doesn’t have too many lines; although his call-out challenging Ip Man to go mano a mano (“Lethee who hath the fascist fifths!”) is eminently quotable.

The ensuing vignettes of explosive street violence are interlaced with family melodrama, as Ip Man deals with his wife’s terminal illness. To the director and cast’s credit, these scenes are sensitively handled and genuinely touching at times; but unfortunately the juxtaposition with the action sequences (well-choreographed and entertaining as they are) is jarring. In the end, the soap could render the film as too slippery a slope for action fans.

More reviews at Den of Cinema
—Dennis Hartley

QOTD: who else?

Published by digby on January 24, 2016

QOTD: who else?

by digby


“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump said to laughter at a rally he held at a Christian college in northwest Iowa. “It’s like, incredible.”

As he spoke, the billionaire put his fingers into the shape of a gun and acted out pulling the trigger.

Gunning for Trump from all sides

Published by digby on January 24, 2016

Gunning for Trump from all sides


by digby

This doesn’t appear to be coming from Cruz supporters like Richard Viguerie. This one is coming from a former Romney establishment type:

With less than two weeks until the Iowa caucuses, a new super PAC has formed with the intention of taking down Donald Trump.

The group, which is called Our Principles PAC, is founded by Katie Packer, a veteran Republican strategist who served as deputy campaign manager on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

This week, the group sent out mailers to Iowa voters attacking Trump, who polls show is in a tight battle with Ted Cruz in the state, where caucuses are to be held on Feb. 1. In a filing with the Federal Election Commission, the group has reported spending nearly $45,000 on mailers.
Additionally, the super PAC has reserved more than $3,000 in spending on Iowa radio stations, according to a media buying source.

Packer has spent months in talks with Republican donors and operatives to gauge financial interest in an anti-Trump campaign.

In a brief interview on Thursday, Packer wouldn’t comment on the group’s plans other than to say: “Our Principles PAC has focused on conservative principles and ensuring that voters have the necessary information to make a wise decision on Election Day.”

I would normally think this would be a devastating blow against Trump. But as I wrote earlier, I don’t think his voters really care about any of that.

The only thing I’d guess that hurts him is the thing where he seemed to say that undocumented workers who’d been here for a while should be allowed to stay. That’s being wishy-washy on the central promise of his campaign: deportation. And it’s the thing his supporters like the most about him.

It’s possible that they may find his “liberal” positions to be hypocritical but I don’t think they really care that much. They know he’s a rich guy from New York. As long as he wants to Make America White Again they’re good.

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Did you ever think you’d see the day?

Published by digby on January 23, 2016

Did you ever think you’d see the day?

by digby

Check this out …

Cruz’s Senate colleagues hate Cruz so much they’re actually stumping for that pompadoured fascist Donald Trump. They won’t even back Rubio or Bush as a simple gesture of mature statesmanship.

Every one of the people who do this are saying that Trump’s racist, authoritarian agenda is one they can live with.

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Published by digby on January 23, 2016

Yay!

by digby

Jay Ackroyd says this is the ultimate Hullabaloo Friday night post and he’s right. But I couldn’t wait!

That’s Tian Tian at the national zoo. He’s one happy panda bear.

The Movement’s Trump dossier

Published by digby on January 23, 2016

The Movement’s Trump dossier

by digby

It isn’t just the National Review. The grassroots movement conservatives are getting an earful too. This is from Richard Viguerie:

This is the fourth in my series of four articles on Donald Trump’s “New York values.”

Senator Ted Cruz took a lot of heat from the establishment media and opponent Donald Trump for his attack on Trump’s “New York values.” Trump’s comeback invoking 9/11 was good politics, but it didn’t really rebut the essential point at the heart of Cruz’s attack. And that is, “Is Donald Trump a conservative and does he share the values of the conservative movement?”

Trump and ClintonsIn this the fourth article in my four-part series on Donald Trump’s New York values the answer is again “NO,” especially if you look at Trump’s long history of supporting far-Left positions, politicians and causes.

Who you walk with tells me an awful lot about who you are. And I would add to that, “where you’ve walked” tells me perhaps even more about what you think, what you will do and how you will govern if elected to public office.

For conservatives opposition to abortion is a given, not only as public policy, but as a foundational principle of personal morality, but for Mr. Trump abortion is and always has been a “choice.”

Back in 1999, during a national television interview, Mr. Trump said, “Well, I’m very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debate the subject. But, you still, I just believe in choice.”

Donald Trump stated in another 1999 interview this time with the Associated Press, “I believe it is a personal decision that should be left to the women and their doctors.”

In his book, “The America We Deserve,” Mr. Trump said, “I support a woman’s right to choose, but I am uncomfortable with the procedures.”

In 2011, Trump said he changed his mind on the issue of abortion but still supports abortion in the case of rape, incest and life of the mother. He also said he supports “the good aspects” of funding Planned Parenthood.

Trump and fellow New Yorker former Governor George Pataki (now out of the race) were alone among Republican candidates for President in defending Planned Parenthood. Indeed, back in August after the gruesome videos of Planned Parenthood executives discussing trading in aborted baby body parts surfaced Trump told Sean Hannity, “They do good things.”

That’s where Mr. Trump has walked on the issue of abortion over the past 16+ years and where he will wander looking for the “good aspects” of funding Planned Parenthood and the “good things” they do no one really knows.

On the issues of special rights for homosexuals and same-sex marriage Trump has a similar history of walking a path that has drawn conservative opposition for many years.

Trump has been an outspoken advocate of special hate-crimes laws covering homosexuality that could be used to stifle free speech and the free exercise of religion, and that form the basis for the outrageous prosecutions of Christians who refuse to participate in homosexual “weddings.”

In 2000 Trump criticized then-Texas Governor George W. Bush for not showing “national leadership by passing a hate-crimes bill but didn’t – presumably from pressure from the Christian right.”

As my friend John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council noted, Trump also favors homosexual “rights” and same-sex marriage laws “that guaranteed same-sex couples equal legal rights as married, heterosexual couples.” Trump also opposed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, the military’s prior ban on openly homosexual service members.

John pointed-out that Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for gay Republicans, has said of Trump, “He is one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency,” and that Trump would do no harm on same-sex marriage, and has a “stand-out position” on nondiscrimination legislation.

That’s where Donald Trump has walked and who he walks with on Biblical marriage and using the government to force Christians to participate in same-sex “marriages” that directly contradict the tenets of their faith.

And if who you walk with tells me a lot about who you are, then who you give your campaign contributions to tells me who you want to walk with.

A 30-year analysis of Trump’s campaign donation history, reported by Jennifer Kerns of The Blaze, shows that beginning in the 1980s, Trump gave big to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ($22,000), to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee of New York ($25,000) and to the DCCC’s “Building Fund” in 1993, 1994 and 1997 (at least $10,000). He also contributed to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002 ($25,000), the New York State Democratic Party ($5,000) and the New York State Democratic Committee also in 2002 ($5,000). Public records show he contributed again to the DCCC in 2006 ($35,000) and with a whopping donation to the Democratic Campaign Committee of New York State in 2008 ($50,000).

In addition to those institutional donations, Trump has also supported longtime Democrat politicians Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Joseph Kennedy, Eliot Spitzer, Charlie Rangel, the Cuomo family and Daniel Patrick Moynihan with numerous donations and even gave Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel $50,000.

Campaign finance data from CrowdPAC reveals that Donald Trump gave big to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, along with Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Dick Durbin, and California Governor Jerry Brown. He even gave his now-opponent Hillary Clinton several donations, although in smaller amounts of $1,000 each.

Trump has brushed these contributions off and noted that he has given to Republicans as well. But these contributions tell us much about how Donald Trump thinks about politics and the political process, and it isn’t that politics is about principles, but that it is about access, about cronyism, about buying your way to power and special treatment.

Donald Trump has made much of the fact that he’s not taking campaign contributions, and that because he’s rich he can’t be bought – but he’s the poster boy for the New York way of buying access when the merits of your cause wouldn’t get you to first base.

Far from being likely to break the Washington Cartel, as Ted Cruz has promised to do, where Donald Trump has walked and who he walks with tells me Donald Trump is a dues-paying member of the crony government club that has been destroying this country for the past 25 years.

When I look at who Donald Trump has walked with and where he’s walked what I see is not a maturing understanding of the value and validity of conservative thought and ideas about how to govern – what I see is a long record of paying to play with liberal politicians, of adopting liberal positions, and now opportunistically trying to mislead voters into believing he is a populist “conservative.”

When you look at Donald Trump’s record, and you look at where he’s walked and who he’s walked with there’s only one top-tier candidate who has consistently walked with conservatives his entire career, and that candidate is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

See the other articles in the series

1. Trump’s New York Values: Appoint Pro-Partial-Birth Abortion Judges, Like His Sister

2. Trump’s New York Values: The Poster Boy For Debasing American Culture

3. Trump’s New York Values: Contempt For The Constitution

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Trump voters. They have never cared about any of this crap. They are not ideological at all. They are racists and xenophobes and nationalists, period.
Their “conservatism” has nothing to do with the constitution or “Christian values” or abortion, not really. They sign on to that stuff because it’s part of the deal. They care about suppressing the rights of African Americans, Latinos, Muslims and foreigners. They’re not fond of feminists and real white liberals either, but it’s race and “American Greatness” that animates and motivates them.

Sorry Cruz supporters. You need to find a way to make these people believe that Trump doesn’t really hate people of color and won’t kill any foreigner who looks at an American sideways. That’s all they care about. And Trump seems like the real thing to me.

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