Month: February 2016

Warren: “You can’t make this stuff up”
by Tom Sullivan

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren brushed off liberal efforts last year to get her to run for president in 2016. It is not hard to guess why. For one, she is smart enough to know that at this point she lacks the depth — especially in foreign policy — to do the job well. (After a quarter century in Congress, Bernie Sanders struggled with foreign policy in the Democratic debate last night.) Second, if she stays in the Senate, Warren can be a thorn in the side of all the right people as an advocate for working Americans for a couple of decades. It’s what she does. She’s very good at it. And it’s fun watching Elizabeth Warren do what she is so good at.

In an interview with The Nation, Warren spoke again about the “rigged game” in Washington. In particular, the bipartisan effort to reform sentencing laws that some Republicans are using the bill as a means of protecting corporate criminals from even the nearly nonexistent prosecutions to which they are now exposed. On the floor of the Senate, Warren said,

[F]or these Republicans, the price of helping out people unjustly locked up in jail for years will be to make it even harder to lock up a white-collar criminal for even a single day. That is shameful, shameful. It’s shameful because we’re already way too easy on corporate lawbreakers.

Warren tells The Nation,

“The Republicans think no one is looking right now, that all of the public attention is somewhere else, and that this is a chance to try to slip through an amendment to make it harder to prosecute white-collar criminals,” she said. “It’s like you can’t make this stuff up, right? The idea that the Republicans are trying to gut one of the main laws to prevent bank fraud—that’s their response to the 2008 financial crisis.”

Warren said she also believes the Republicans have overreached, and are inviting a serious public blowback during a crucial political year. “If the Republicans succeed in further undercutting the laws to hold big banks accountable, I think it will become a major issue by next November.”

Warren released a report last week detailing 20 cases where federal prosecutors caught big companies violating the law, but imposed only modest fines and did not require the offending corporations to admit guilt.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was feeling the heat enough to say Bernie Sanders represents a “dangerous moment” in American history. Sanders has called out Blankfein by name, and his company “a poster child for the greed and recklessness he says is endemic in finance,” according to The Hill. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders called out the Koch brothers repeatedly in the Democratic debate last night. Blankfein apparently doesn’t have the same stomach for the public heat that the Kochs do.

You can watch Elizabeth Warren’s recent Senate speech below.

“Is it not fitting that I be president?”

by digby

Over at his place Dennis Hartley found this alternate version of Jeb’s weird “clap” speech:

He found a new campaign song too…

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The man beloved by Iowa voters

by digby

Here’s a closer look at Ted Cruz’s base from Right Wing Watch:

Last Fall, Cruz appeared in Iowa alongside a pastor who has called for the government to use the death penalty to punish homosexuality. Not stung from the criticism he received for courting the radical pastor, Kevin Swanson, Cruz he later released a statement touting the support of an anti-abortion extremist, Troy Newman, who has said that a just government would punish abortion providers with death. Again facing criticism, Cruz doubled down and appointed Newman co-chair of his “pro-life coalition.”

As it turned out, Newman was just one of the first of many extremists whose support has been touted by Cruz’s campaign.

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group, helped coalesce Religious Right support behind Cruz and campaigned with the senator in Iowa. Cruz apparently sees it as helpful to campaign alongside Perkins, who has defended Uganda’s “kill-the-gays” bill and claimed that gay rights advocates are pawns of the Devil.

Perkins joined Cruz on the trail in Iowa along with Glenn Beck, the conspiracy theory radio host; David Barton, the right-wing pseudo-historian who heads one of the leading pro-Cruz super PACs and who, like Beck, has declared Cruz to be God’s answer to his prayers; reality TV star Phil Robertson, notorious for making bigoted remarks; James Dobson, the anti-gay radio personality who founded Focus on the Family; Rep. Steve King, the congressman known for his anti-gay and anti-immigrant tirades; Bob Vander Plaats, the Iowa political organizer who describes homosexuality as a “public health risk” similar to smoking; and far-right radio broadcaster Steve Deace.

Other endorsers touted by the Cruz campaign have included North Carolina activists who have referred to gay people as Satan’s minions; a North Carolina pastor who has likened gay people to “maggots” and linked them to Ebola; an Oklahoma preacher who warns that homosexuality is part of a demonic communist conspiracy to bring down America; a Virginia radio host who has blamed gays for everything from terrorism to train derailments; and a Virginia lawmaker who has sponsored an assortment of bizarre anti-gay bills.

Most recently, Cruz welcomed the endorsement of Mike Bickle, the leader of a church that many have criticized for using cult-like practices, who has referred to Oprah Winfrey as a harbinger of the Antichrist, called gay rights as a Satanic plot that will usher in the End Times, and explained that Adolf Hitler was raised up by God to be a “hunter” of Jews.

Cruz’s decision to tout such radical activists — not to mention his own extreme policy positions, such as promising to defy the Supreme Court on marriage equality and abortion rights — is no accident, as he is basing his campaign strategy on the hope that he can motivate tens of millions of conservative evangelicals to go to the polls.

And he’s out there trying to scare monger about Trump and the nuclear button.  He’s the one who’s trying to bring on the rapture …

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Republican email scandal? Say it ain’t so

by digby

I’ll be interested to see how the Republicans spin this. If this whole thing was not a stupid irrelevant witch hunt, they would have to look into the matter as part of their “oversight” responsibilities:

State Department officials have determined that classified information was sent to the personal email accounts of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the senior staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, NBC News has learned.

In an interview with NBC News, Powell challenged the conclusion, saying nothing that went to his personal account was secret. A Rice spokeswoman said the emails were about diplomatic communications.

In a letter to Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy dated Feb. 3, State Department Inspector General Steve Linick said that the State Department has determined that 12 emails examined from State’s archives contained national security information now classified “Secret” or “Confidential.” The letter was obtained by NBC News.

Two of the messages were sent to Powell’s personal account, and 10 were sent to personal accounts of Rice’s senior aides, the letter said.

None of the messages were marked classified when originally sent, and none were determined to include information from the intelligence community, Linick said in the document.

Powell told NBC News he strongly disputed that the information in the messages sent to him was classified, and characterized the contents as “fairly minor.”

“I wish they would release them,” Powell said, “so that a normal, air-breathing mammal would look at them and say, ‘What’s the issue?'”

Powell said he has read the two messages in question, having been made aware of the letter. The messages originated with ambassadors — one in the Philippines, the other in Europe. He said they were first circulated on unclassified State Department systems, and sent to his personal account by his assistant.

“They were unclassified at the time, and they are, in my judgment, still unclassified,” he said.

Huh. I’ll bet Clinton would sign on to that as well.

Powell, who served as secretary from 2001 to 2005, said he used a personal email account because State’s email system was slow and cumbersome. Powell is credited with modernizing State’s computer infrastructure, which did not at the time allow each employee to have the internet at their desks.

“State’s system at the time was inadequate,” he said.

But, he added, “I did not use my email account for any classified matters because I had a classified computer on my desk.”

So did Clinton, in case you were wondering. And she used it.

Rice, now a professor at Stanford University, was unavailable for comment, said her chief of staff, Georgia Godfrey.

“She did not use email as secretary nor use a personal email account,” Godfey said via email. “My understanding is that the report is in reference to emails sent to her assistant reporting diplomatic conversations and they contained no intelligence information.”

Linick’s letter said his initial findings suggest there could be a lot more classified material in State’s unclassified archives. He recommended that State take steps to find and remove it.

This is one of the stories that’s been ignored in this whole mess. Powell destroyed all the emails from his personal email address on the assumption that all official business had been captured by the State Department. If these congress people who are now supposedly so concerned about security are to do proper oversight, they can have the State Department go through all of the Powell emails in their system and have them made public too. You know, for the sake of transparency.

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QOTD: Trumpie’s back

by digby

“Oh, illegal immigrants are the backbone of our country? I don’t think so, darling,” I don’t think so. I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. They’re not the backbone. 

“Let me just tell you something. Let me just tell you something. You know what the backbone of our country [is]? People that came here, and they came here legally — people that came here to this country legally, and they worked their ass off, and they made this country great.”

He’s taken to calling people darling on the stump I’ve noticed. It’s got a little Liberace vibe about it.

For the record, migration back and forth over the southern border has been happening throughout our history with plenty of people from Mexico and other parts of Latin America participating in every single aspect of building America to what it is today. “Legality” had nothing to do with it. It didn’t even exist until the 20th century.

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I thought Christie only did this to kindergarten teachers

by digby

If you want to vote for a bullying asshole the GOP is giving you a number of choices. Trump, it goes without saying, is the best. But Christie’s now giving him a run for his money.

First dubbing Rubio “the boy in the bubble” Tuesday morning, Christie has issued a series of critiques on Rubio and accused him of ducking the media’s questions and sticking to closely choreographed stump speeches.

Chris Christie Promises New Hampshire He’ll ‘Be Like Gum on the Bottom of Your Shoe’
Chris Christie Expects to ‘Over-Perform’ in Iowa Compared to Polls
“This isn’t the student council election, everybody. This is an election for President of the United States. Let’s get the boy out of the bubble, and let’s see if he’s ready to play next week in New Hampshire, I’m ready to play,” Christie told reporters Tuesday.

And so began a series of insults delivered in rapid-fire succession against Rubio, by which Christie has sought to drive home his case for why the first-term U.S. senator is “simply not ready to be president.”

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” Christie said Wednesday morning, warning the outcome of a Republican first-term senator in the Oval Office will be no different in practical terms than the last seven years of an Obama administration.

By early afternoon on Wednesday, Christie had accused Rubio of having left “no footprint” of accomplishment in the U.S. Senate.

“I would challenge anyone to show me the significant accomplishment that Sen. Rubio has done while he is in the United States Senate; I can’t find one,” Christie said at a news conference after accepting the endorsement of the New Hampshire Speaker of the House.

During the same news conference, Christie called Rubio “the master of the drive-by town hall” for meetings that run shorter in length compared to Christie’s typical two-hour-long town hall and quipped that “every day is Groundhog Day for the Rubio campaign,” with Rubio sticking to scripted remarks.

On Wednesday evening, Christie told Fox News that Rubio “acts like the king of England” and compared his campaign strategy to a witness protection program.

Defending his attacks on Rubio in an interview on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” this morning, Christie said “Marco can say whatever he wants about that but this is his experience or lack thereof.”

“He just doesn’t have any experience, George,” Christie told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.

While the polling puts Rubio steadily ahead of Christie heading into Tuesday’s primary, Christie’s offensive comes as Christie tries to make the case that New Hampshire primary is a two-man race between he and Rubio.

“This New Hampshire primary is now down to a choice between me and Marco Rubio, and everybody knows it,” Christie said Wednesday. “Sen. Rubio knows it. I know it. That’s why he is engaged with me and why I am engaged with him.”

Christie was, after all, going to be the Northeastern mook in the race before Trump and along and stole his thunder.

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Please clap. Please …

by digby

You will be tempted to feel sorry for Jeb!  after watching this clip. It is a pathetic moment. But don’t. He is the man who ruthlessly guided the election apparatus of his state to steal the election in 2000 for his brother.  And we know what happened:

This happened too:

Sitting recently on his brick back patio here, Michael Schiavo called Jeb Bush a vindictive, untrustworthy coward.

For years, the self-described “average Joe” felt harassed, targeted and tormented by the most important person in the state.

“It was a living hell,” he said, “and I blame him.”

Michael Schiavo was the husband of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead woman from the Tampa Bay area who ended up at the center of one of the most contentious, drawn-out conflicts in the history of America’s culture wars. The fight over her death lasted almost a decade. It started as a private legal back-and-forth between her husband and her parents. Before it ended, it moved from circuit courts to district courts to state courts to federal courts, to the U.S. Supreme Court, from the state legislature in Tallahassee to Congress in Washington. The president got involved. So did the pope.

But it never would have become what it became if not for the dogged intervention of the governor of Florida at the time, the second son of the 41st president, the younger brother of the 43rd, the man who sits near the top of the extended early list of likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates. On sustained, concentrated display, seen in thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of emails he sent, was Jeb the converted Catholic, Jeb the pro-life conservative, Jeb the hands-on workaholic, Jeb the all-hours emailer—confident, competitive, powerful, obstinate Jeb. Longtime watchers of John Ellis Bush say what he did throughout the Terri Schiavo case demonstrates how he would operate in the Oval Office. They say it’s the Jebbest thing Jeb’s ever done.

So yes, he looks like a sad sack as he continues his flaccid campaign to nowhere. But don’t feel too sorry. The country has dodged a big bullet. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of other ones still coming at us.

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Is TPP dead if Sanders becomes President?

by Gaius Publius

Sure sounds like it to me. I’ll made a longer deal of this later, but just the basics are stunning (my emphasis):

Sanders Vows to Reject Job-Killing Trade Deal

… “As your president, not only will I make sure that the TPP does not get implemented, I will not send any trade deal to Congress that will make it easier for corporations to outsource American jobs overseas,” Sanders said.

The whole thing is here. But wow.

UPDATE: The “longer deal” I made of this story is posted here. Seems like NAFTA is similarly vulnerable to a President Sanders. Will he take that opportunity too?

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you’d like to help out, go here; you can adjust the split any way you like at the link. If you’d like to “phone-bank for Bernie,” go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP

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Flint goes to Washington
by Tom Sullivan

Photo ACLU Michigan

As some day it may happen that a scapegoat must be found, they’ve got a little list. The investigations into the poisoning of Flint, Michigan are only just beginning. The FBI is now involved:

WASHINGTON — Government officials tangled on Wednesday over who was to blame for the crisis in Flint, Michigan, that allowed lead-contaminated water to flow to thousands of residents at a combative congressional hearing that devolved into a partisan fight over witnesses and no-shows.

“A failure of epic proportions,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the first Capitol Hill hearing since the crisis in Flint emerged last year.

Flint’s former state-appointed emergency manager, Darnell Earley, was a no show. He refused a federal subpoena claiming there was too short a notice for him to appear in Washington. The Detroit Free Press reports:

As the hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee got underway on Wednesday, its chairman, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said he’d turn to federal marshals, if necessary, “to hunt him down” and serve the subpoena on Earley, garnering cheers in the packed hearing room.

Earley was state-appointed financial manager in Flint when it switched its water supply to the Flint River in 2014 as a temporary cost-cutting move. Because that water was not treated with corrosion control, the more corrosive river water leached lead from old pipes into residents’ taps.

It’s not just the water that smells. Charlie Pierce thinks he sniffs “a bag job in utero, seeking to pin responsibility for the crimes in Flint on the federal Environmental Protection Agency.” For my money, the early favorite for fall guy is actually named Earley.

The New York Times Editorial Board weighs in this morning on Michigan’s use of emergency managers to circumvent democratically elected leadership:

The emergency managers in Flint and Detroit schools went in as dictators, and it is not surprising they made glaring mistakes, while ignoring complaints and suggestions from the communities they were supposedly helping. Unlike the financial control boards in New York and Washington, which included people who had a stake in those cities, Michigan’s emergency managers answer only to the governor and the Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, who tend to be elected from suburban and largely white parts of the state.

Poor, disenfranchised communities make such easy prey and convenient scapegoats. Don’t be surprised to see Fox News and the Right Wing Noise machine go “Lower Ninth Ward” once again on the city of Flint.

That time when right wingers loved the gays

by digby

So President Obama visited a mosque today and delivered a beautiful speech about pluralism and tolerance and what it means to be American.

The right, predictably, went crazy. But their main objection seemed somewhat odd. See if you can discern why I might think that:

President Obama met behind closed doors on Wednesday with 13 Muslim leaders at a Baltimore mosque with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. And, according to a White House pool report, one of the participants is the Islamic Society of Baltimore’s anti-gay resident scholar, Imam Yaseen Shaikh.

Obama’s short trip to the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) marks his first visit to a U.S. mosque since taking office. After the meeting Obama spoke to congregants at the mosque, which he said “like so many in this country, is an All-American story.”

Introduced by ISB’s president, Muhammad Jameel, who in 2014 accused Israel of engaging in “genocide” against Palestine, praised the mosque for its inter-faith outreach efforts. He also praised the mosque’s school, “where teachers open young minds.”

But ISB’s schools, the Al-Rahma School and Qur’an Academy, are led by Imam Shaikh, a British citizen who formerly served as imam in Plano, Tex., who has said that Islam is adamantly opposed to homosexuality.

A 2013 YouTube video uncovered by The Daily Caller also shows Shaikh lamenting that gay rights activists have “hijacked” the political system to further their agenda. (RELATED: The US Mosque Obama Has Chosen For His First Visit Has Deep Extremist Ties)

“This whole subject of homosexuality in the public sphere…is no longer a religious issue, unfortunately, as much as we want to use the religious card and try to defeat this, now it’s become a politicized issue,” Shaikh said in the hour-long sermon.

“Politicians are highly influenced by people who back them, and we find that these politicians who are calling for gay rights and marriage and supporting gay rights are lobbied and campaigned by gay activists, by gay groups. And they are throwing money at it left and right to gain some acceptance in society, to be considered normal people, to be treated normally.”

Shaikh also warned that children must be taught that homosexuality is “not okay.”

“We have to counter the efforts that are taking place elsewhere,” Shaikh says in the video, adding that “if our children are taught that [homosexuality is] okay, we have to teach them it’s not okay.”

That’s from Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller which appears to be very upset about this anti-gay cleric.

This, however, is not a problem:

EARLIER this month, in Des Moines, the prominent home-schooling advocate and pastor Kevin Swanson again called for the punishment of homosexuality by death. To be clear, he added that the time for eliminating America’s gay population was “not yet” at hand. We must wait for the nation to embrace the one true religion, he suggested, and gay people must be allowed to repent and convert.

Mr. Swanson proposed this at the National Religious Liberties Conference, an event he organized. Featured speakers included three Republican contenders for the presidency: the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

A cursory search of google will turn up dozens and dozens of instances of right wing politicians embracing anti-gay pastors and priests. But that’s totally different.

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