Month: February 2016

Chicken Little Republicans

by digby

Here is a hilarious observation from conservative writer John Podhoretz about last night’s Democratic debate:

The message from Thursday night’s Democratic debate is that everybody in America should get on a leaky rowboat and find somewhere, anywhere, else in the world to live — because life in the United States is a nightmare from which millionaires and billionaires and the Koch brothers and the Republicans will not allow us to awake.

Has he listened to any of the Republican debates? In their view American is a dystopian hellscape of epic proportions on the brink of total ruin at the hands of foreigners who are making us eat beans tacos against our will, terrorists who are plotting in our own neighborhoods to kill us in our beds and require the survivors to live by Sharia law, and gays and feminazis forcing everyone to have abortions and marry members of their own sex. And that’s just for starters.

The frontrunner for the nomination openly says:

“This country is a hellhole, and we’re going down fast.I want to make this country great again.”

Here’s just a sample from the last debate:

Bush: The idea that somehow we’re better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder.

Carson: You know, when you go into the store and buy a box of laundry detergent, and the price has gone up — you know, 50 cents because of regulations….And everything is costing more money, and we are killing our people like this….It’s the evil government that is putting all these regulations on us so that we can’t survive.

Trump: Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show….We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people….Those two young people — those two horrible young people in California when they shot the 14 people….Many people saw pipe bombs and all sorts of things all over their apartment. Why weren’t they vigilant? Why didn’t they call? Why didn’t they call the police?…We have to find out — many people knew about what was going on. Why didn’t they turn those two people in so that you wouldn’t have had all the death? There’s something going on and it’s bad. And I’m saying we have to get to the bottom of it.

Rubio: This president is undermining the constitutional basis of this government. This president is undermining our military. He is undermining our standing in the world….The damage he has done to America is extraordinary. Let me tell you, if we don’t get this election right, there may be no turning back for America.

Kasich: In this country, people are concerned about their economic future. They’re very concerned about it. And they wonder whether somebody is getting something to — keeping them from getting it. That’s not the America that I’ve ever known.

Christie: When I think about the folks who are out there at home tonight watching….They know that this country is not respected around the world anymore. They know that this country is pushing the middle class, the hardworking taxpayers, backwards, and they saw a president who doesn’t understand their pain, and doesn’t have any plan for getting away from it.

In the Republican psyche it is midnight in America.

And by the way, I haven’t heard any Republicans touting the improved economy lately, have you? Have any of them talked about the low unemployment rate? I guess I may have missed those comments on the stump. I listen to and read a lot of right wing talk. They are convinced that Barack Obama has turned this nation into a third world nightmare from which we may never recover. In fact, they are in a daily state of full-fledged panic over it. Sanders’ abstract indictment of the financial system and Clinton’s dry list of policy improvements are downright cheery and Reaganesque by comparison.

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Why are the GOP groups so wimpy in their criticisms of Trump?

by digby

This is the best they can do?

Yesterday on MSNBC some South Carolina Republicans were shown Trump being profane and juvenile on the stump and they didn’t like it. The implication was that Southerners are more genteel than northeasterners and won’t like his crude personality. I don’t know if that’s true or not but perhaps it is.

What is astonishing to me is that everyone in the Republican Party knows they cannot attack him for his barbaric proposals to deport millions of people, build walls, ban Muslims, kill and torture suspects families, waterboarding “and worse”. These are all things the GOP base favors and they dare not challenge it. The only thing they can go after him for are that tepid bowl of mush in the Club for Growth ads, none of which are deal breakers for anyone.

Trump is the ultimate expression of the Republican base and they’re stuck with it.

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Voter ID and GOP women: acceptable losses
by Tom Sullivan

GOP-sponsored voting restrictions passed across the country in recent years will come into full force as the primaries roll on. Laws such as North Carolina’s massive 2013 election law, for example, ostensibly passed to combat all-but-nonexistent voter fraud. The Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA) is awaiting the judgment of a federal court, much like the federal court that last Friday overturned the GOP’s congressional redistricting in the state. Republicans weakened some of VIVA’s provisions just days in advance of going to court. Why? Because they knew.

We will begin to see soon who the casualties are. Some of the effects were felt this month by Reba Bowser, 86, of Asheville, North Carolina. A staunch Republican, Bowser attempted to comply with the new voter identification requirements put in place by her party’s state leadership. She went with her son, Ed, to obtain a photo ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Peter Onge of the Charlotte Observer takes up the tale:

On Monday, they went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in west Asheville. There, they laid out all of Reba’s paperwork for a DMV official – her birth records from Pennsylvania, her Social Security card, the N.H. driver’s license she let expire because she no longer wanted to drive.

But there was a problem. When Reba got married in 1950, she had her name legally changed. Like millions upon millions of women, she swapped out her middle name for her maiden name.

Reba Miller Bowser, the married name she’d used for decades, had never been an issue before, not in applying for driver’s licenses in other states or for flying to foreign countries. Until now. The computer kicked out a discrepancy and the DMV denied her application.

The DMV failed to mention a provision in the new law that would allow Reba to sign a name-change affidavit. Bowser’s daughter-in-laws was none too pleased. Her son got the point:

It’s an issue that the Bowsers haven’t followed much, at least until it snagged Reba. But now, Ed says: “I’m thinking how this affected an 86-year-old woman with limited transportation and resources. You think about extending that to poor communities and minority communities.”

That’s what Republicans were thinking, too, when they crafted the voter ID law. They knew the hassle they created would mostly affect the people who vote for their opponents.

But that is where most of these tales of woe and intrigue stop. Dahliah Lithwick speculated in 2013 that these laws designed to suppress the votes of Democrats might also disproportionately suppress the votes of Republican women. With the focus on how voter ID laws affect Democrat-leaning groups, this is an effect the press and studies routinely miss. It speaks volumes about the Machiavellian nature of the GOP’s vote suppression effort. I wrote about it in regard to North Carolina’s voter ID law for Crooks and Liars three years ago:

Democratic voters are the GOP’s primary but not its only targets. VIVA is a weapon of mass disruption that will harm Republicans as well.

In a report issued in April, the NC State Board of Elections estimated that 176,091 registered Democrats are without the state-issued photo identity card most will have to pay $20-$32 for before they can vote under VIVA. Plus 73,787 unaffiliated and 1,126 Libertarian voters. Among registered Republican voters, 67,639 have no photo identity cards. Over 2/3 are women.

See, GOP leaders are playing the percentages. They figure that VIVA’s voting restrictions will hurt more Democrats than Republicans — and they will hurt Republicans. Still, Republican leaders calculate that, in the end, the net result will help them hold onto power. Indefinitely.

But the real story North Carolina and the rest of the country misses is that Republican leaders consider any of their own voters hurt by these vote suppression measures collateral damage. Acceptable casualties. Expendables.

And two-thirds of them women. Meet Reba Bowser.

“You see? I kill my own men.” – supervillain Cassanova Frankenstein, Mystery Men (1999).

Good news ins the real world

by digby

We interrupt our regularly scheduled political pouts and tantrums to bring you this little bit of news:

US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have announced that peace talks in Munich aimed at reaching resolution on the conflict in Syria have brokered a deal that could see a ceasefire “within a week”.

Military action against Islamic State fighters would continue, but humanitarian access for civilians besieged by years of civil strife would be the key priority, they said.

There are many details and copies of the agreement at the link. The most important thing is to get humanitarian aid in there as quickly as possible. And then, we’ll see. Lets hoe this is a turning point …

A little trip down memory lane

by digby

I just ran across this and it reminded of all the candidates we’ve lost:

John Kasich, moderate Republican

by digby

I get a little bit concerned when I hear Democrats telling me that Kasich isn’t so bad and if he won the GOP nomination it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Here’s one reason why:

The Ohio legislature moved Wednesday to cut off $1.3 million in public health grants to Planned Parenthood in a closely watched vote that could have repercussions for the surging presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich (R).

The bill, which cleared the Senate last month and passed the House on Wednesday, prohibits the Ohio Department of Health from giving state or federal grants to organizations that conduct or “promote” abortions. Kasich, who placed second in the Republican primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday, has said he would sign the bill.

[…]

The measure had been a top priority of antiabortion activists in the state…

The Ohio bill is different in that it targets state and federal programs addressing HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, infant mortality and other problems. Planned Parenthood receives a large percentage of that money every year to administer the programs across the state. Under the new bill, the organization would be barred from administering those programs because of its role as an abortion provider.

A Kasich spokesman said the governor plans to sign the bill, calling it a fiscally responsible move.

Maybe that’s no big deal. But keep in mind that even if the GOP sobers up and rejects Trump and Cruz, their most moderate of candidates is happy to deny people vital life saving programs in order to stage a cheap political stunt.

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QOTD: wingnut drama queens

by digby

“I’m gonna grab one more cookie, one more cigarette. Alrighty then.” —Oregon occupier David Fry, after agreeing to surrender

The family of Michelle Fiore (Blond haired woman in the center), Nevada legislator and “negotiator” of the surrender

The last four holdouts in the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon surrendered peacefully Thursday morning, 40 days after the standoff began.

Three of the four walked out to waiting F.B.I. agents over the course of a few minutes after 9:30 a.m., but the fourth, David Fry, at first said he would not.

In an extraordinary, hours long negotiation with supporters and F.B.I. agent, with thousands of people listening to the conversation on a live stream online, he aired a wide range of grievances, said he was suicidal, and said repeatedly that his choice was “liberty or death.” Ultimately he gave himself up without a fight.

The occupation by antigovernment militants appeared to be reaching its end in late January, when 11 of its most prominent members — including the leader, Ammon Bundy — were arrested while venturing out of the refuge. One protester was killed, and some of the remaining occupiers heeded calls by Mr. Bundy and others to go home.

But four refused to leave, and held out for another two weeks until three gave themselves up Thursday to the F.B.I. after lengthy negotiations by phone. The Rev. Franklin Graham and Michele Fiore, a Nevada state lawmaker and supporter of the Bundy family, helped smooth the surrender, first speaking by phone to the occupiers in a conversation that was streamed live online. They then accompanied the F.B.I. agents who drove to the refuge and arrested the holdouts.

The end of the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge came the day after the F.B.I. arrested Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon Bundy and an icon to antigovernment activists in the West, who was at the center of another armed standoff with government agents, in Nevada in 2014.

Speaking with the four holdouts, Ms. Fiore urged them to surrender peacefully to the F.B.I. so that they could continue to spread their message. “A dead man can’t talk, a dead man can’t write,” she told them. “We have to just stay together, stay alive.”

Reverend Graham said, “You all just do everything they told you to do, and it’s going to work out great.”

The occupiers replied that they would walk out to meet the F.B.I., stressing repeatedly that they would be unarmed, and that they were leaving their guns behind.

At 9:38 a.m., one of them, Sean Anderson, said he and his wife, Sandy, were walking out, and he could be heard yelling “coming out!” to the agents. Mr. Fry described the Andersons making their way out, hands raised, with Mr. Anderson holding an American flag in one hand, until they were taken into custody.

At 9:42, Mr. Fry said another of the occupiers, Jeff Banta, was going toward the agents, hands in the air.

Then Mr. Fry, who had seemed calm to that point, lit a cigarette and became agitated. “Unless my grievances are heard, I won’t come out,” he shouted. Supporters on the phone, and those at the refuge, urged him to remain calm and surrender.

“I’m actually feeling suicidal right now,” Mr. Fry said. He said he was sitting alone in a tent. “I have to stand my ground,” he said. “It’s liberty or death. I will not go another day as a slave to this system.”

“I declare war against the federal government,” he said a few minutes later. “I’ve peacefully voted and nothing is ever done.”

Mr. Fry said his grievances had not been addressed. He claimed his taxes were being used to pay for abortions. “Until you guys address my grievances, I will just sit in here by myself.”

“Sometimes it’s better just to die. Liberty or death,” he said. “I declare war against the federal government.”

In past interviews, Mr. Fry said he had come to the occupation after becoming friend with one of its leaders, LaVoy Finicum, over the Internet. Mr. Finicum died on Jan. 26 in a clash with the authorities.

The refuge, about six hours from Portland, was taken over by a small band of armed militants on Jan. 2. They demanded that two local ranchers, imprisoned on arson charges for a fire that spread to public lands, be released, and that federal lands that the occupiers said were improperly taken from local ranchers in decades past be returned to local or private control.

The remaining four occupiers had repeatedly invoked the killing of Mr. Finicum, by federal agents during a traffic stop as a sign of the government’s unwillingness to bring the standoff to a peaceful end.

Mr. Finicum was shot when he reached for a firearm, the F.B.I. said. Ammon Bundy, the leader of the occupation, was arrested during the stop along with several other members of the group, including his brother, Ryan.

About 50 or 60 cars were parked at the roadblock outside the sanctuary, most of them belonging to journalists and the rest belonging to protest sympathizers waving flags and signs. One woman held a sign saying, “I live in America, not Russia.”

Thomas Wagner of Christmas Valley, Ore., stood on top of his pickup truck at the roadblock, wearing full military fatigues — from boots to helmet — and waving an American flag. A 32-year-old unemployed security guard with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his truck, he said, “I came here to support these four patriots, to let them know that they are not being abandoned.”

The standoff has highlighted the anger of many Western ranchers and farmers over federal government ownership of vast tracts of land in Western states, which they believe should be turned over to the states or to private ownership.

Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan, became a national figure in 2014, after federal officials tried to confiscate his cattle because he had refused for more than two decades to pay fees to the federal government for grazing his cattle on federal land. Heavily armed self-described militiamen flocked to his ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., to face down the authorities, and when the agents retreated rather than risk a shootout, Mr. Bundy hailed it as a victory for those angered by federal regulation. He has been seen as a hero by the Oregon occupiers and by people sympathetic to their cause.

Cliven Bundy’s lawyer, Michael Arnold, said his client had been arrested at the Portland airport and would face a felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties, in connection with the 2014 standoff.

These are the revolutionaries who are going to save us from tyranny. God help us.

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Trump math


by digby

Donald Trump is telling people that the unemployment rate could be as high as 42%. And yes there are probably more unemployed than are reflected in the official numbers. But let’s just say he’s exaggerating. I know, hard to believe, coming from him.

Unemployment has really come down. Obviously, the losses in income incurred over that period period of Great recession — time, wealth accumulation, career advancement, debt are still hanging over people. But it is getting better, at least in this regard.

And yet Trump says the real unemployment rate could be as high as 42%.

This is good news too — for the younger, college educated anyway:

If we could get rid of their debt overhang, the younger generation might be looking at a slightly brighter future than we thought they would be a few years ago.

As long as the Republicans don’t take total power and do what they always do — destroy everything and leave the mess to their rivals.

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What’s up with Lee Atwater’s firewall?

by digby

I wrote about Jebbers in South Carolina for Salon this morning:

“He needed to be in the game, and last night, he was able to do so,” said Barry Wynn, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who is raising money for Bush. Although Donald Trump tops GOP polls in the Palmetto State, Wynn denounced the billionaire’s “Kardashian-style vulgarity.”

“I don’t think that sells as well in the South, as it does in New England,” he said. “You may find that South Carolina corrects some of the mistakes of New Hampshire.”

Cliven Bundy arrested
by Tom Sullivan

The Oregonian reports that Cliven Bundy, 74, was arrested when he arrived last night at Portland International Airport. Bundy faces charges related to the 2014 standoff at his ranch:

He faces a conspiracy charge to interfere with a federal officer — the same charge lodged against two of his sons, Ammon and Ryan, for their role in the Jan. 2 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns. He also faces weapons charges.

[…]

Bundy has been under federal scrutiny since his ranch standoff with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He has not paid grazing fees on federal land and he owes the agency $1 million in unpaid fees and penalties. He and militia supporters confronted federal agents who had impounded Bundy’s cattle that were found on federal property.

[…]

Another key participant in the Nevada showdown was Ryan Payne, a Montana militiaman who helped organize militia snipers to take aim at federal agents in Nevada. Payne is considered the tactician behind the Oregon takeover and also has been arrested and faces a federal conspiracy charge.

The four remaining occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns panicked over a live telephone feed as FBI agents brought in armored vehicles and moved into the compound yesterday:

At one point on the audio, Sean Anderson was heard yelling, “Did your boss send you here to kill innocent Americans?”

At another point, an agent over a loudspeaker said: “David, I want to talk to you.”

“What do you want?” Fry replied, then yelled, “You guys killed LaVoy” and “You let Obama bring terrorists into our country.”

There was plenty more of that in the feed, to be sure. LaVoy Finicum, shot and killed while reaching into his jacket during a traffic stop, has become the latest militia martyr. “Just shoot me,” he yelled at officers moments before. (The FBI video is here.)

The group is expected to surrender this morning, but “only if escorted by Nevada politician Michele Fiore and Franklin Graham,” reports KGW TV Portland.

Before these developments last night, Dave Neiwert wrote that the “American far right’s endless cycle of violence and victimhood” will not end with the occupation:

The patriot movement would never let a good martyr go to waste. For the antigovernment movement, an embrace of martyrdom isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, an essential element of what makes such extremist belief systems tick. Born out of the whitewashed remnants of the radical racist-right movements of the 1960s and ’70s — particularly the viciously anti-Semitic and racist Posse Comitatus movement, which then morphed into the “militia movement” of the 1990s and provided the structural framework for most of today’s claims by so-called “constitutionalists” and “Patriots” — this movement has a long history of attracting violent actors who are willing both to kill and be killed in the name of their extreme worldview.

Neiwert warns:

There is always a price to this martyrdom, as it comes to embody the squaring of accounts and the dispensation of justice in the minds of the True Believers. That amounts to a kind of expiation in the form of retributive violence, the kind that was unleashed on the federal Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, by Tim McVeigh and his patriot comrades.

That is the dark cloud that now hangs over the whole affair, beyond the deaths and injuries that came about because of the Bundys’ quixotic quest to prove their “constitutionalist” fantasia somehow legitimate. Finicum’s martyrdom now means that someone, somewhere, someday, will be seeking retribution.

In “Patriot” America, freedom means needing a private arsenal to defend yourself against your neighbors and the government. Cue Lee Greenwood.