The Commentariat -- July 9, 2014
Internal links removed.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama is requesting almost $4 billion in emergency funding from Congress to confront an immigration crisis from a wave of unaccompanied children surging across the southern border of the United States, White House officials said Tuesday. The financial request, which is almost twice as much as initial reports had suggested might be necessary, would boost spending on border patrol agents, immigration judges, aerial surveillance, and new detention facilities. Nearly half of the money would be used to improve care for the children while they are moved through the deportation process." ...
... David Nakamura & Wesley Lowrey of the Washington Post: "the proposal was quickly met with broad skepticism among Republican lawmakers, who were doubtful that the package would be approved quickly — if at all.... GOP leaders --; who have called on Obama to take stronger action — said they were reluctant to give the administration a 'blank check' without more detailed plans to ensure that the money would help stem the crisis at the border." ...
Children Are Kinda Like Trout. [President Obama] invented [the $4BB number]. But we do need the money so we can incarcerate people so it's not 'catch and release.' Yes. -- Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
... Papers, Please. Fawn Johnson & Rachel Reubein of the National Journal: "Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida wants to require employers to verify electronically that new hires are in the country legally and the government to put in place an electronic entry-exit system at points of entry at the border." ...
... CW: Get your birth certificates ready, job-seekers. For Marco's proposal to pass the minimal racism threshold, every potential employee would have to be required to present evidence of U.S. citizenship or a legal right to work here. ...
... Because Issa & Cruz Will Accept Statistical Analyses. Tom Wong in Center for American Progress: "... according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, asylum applications from children are up by 712 percent in the neighboring countries of Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize.... A close statistical evaluation of the available data suggests ... it is not U.S. policy but rather violence and the desire to find safety that is the impetus for these children's journeys....Some in Congress [Darrell Issa, Ted Cruz] have attempted to score political points by arguing that the increased numbers are the result of the administration's own immigration enforcement policies...." ...
... Another Little Factoid for Darrell & Ted to Ignore. Carl Hulse of the New York Times: A bill "signed into law by President George W. Bush, a measure that passed without controversy..., enacted quietly during the transition to the Obama administration, is at the root of the potentially calamitous flow of unaccompanied minors to the nation's southern border. Originally pushed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers as well as by evangelical groups to combat sex trafficking, the bill gave substantial new protections to children entering the country alone who were not from Mexico or Canada by prohibiting them from being quickly sent back to their country of origin." Republicans say pointing out that they all voted for the bill (it passed unanimously in both Houses) & a Republican president signed it is a "distraction," &, you know, it's way unfair to hold them accountable for their own actions when they couldn't foresee the consequences. (Paraphrase, but accurate, IMHO.) ...
... CW: Why did Republicans in 2008 vote for a bill that would bring more Central Americans into the U.S.? Were they less racist then? Probably. But the real reasons: Sex and God. ...
... Alberto Arce & Michael Weissenstein of the AP: "United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States and Mexico to accept tens of thousands of people currently ineligible for asylum.
Bernie Becker & Keith Laing of the Hill: "A sense of urgency took hold in the Capitol on Tuesday, as lawmakers ramped up work on legislation to prevent states from suffering a 28 percent cut in transportation funding next month. But even with the burst of activity, top tax writers in both the House and the Senate stopped short of saying they had a deal that would avert sidelining thousands of construction workers in the heat of an election year."
Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The Senate intelligence committee voted Tuesday to adopt a major cybersecurity bill that critics fear will give the National Security Agency even wider access to American data than it already has. Observers said the bill, approved by a 12 to 3 vote in a meeting closed to the public, would face a difficult time passing the full Senate, considering both the shortened legislative calendar in an election year and the controversy surrounding surveillance. But the bill is a priority of current and former NSA directors, who warn that private companies' vulnerability to digital sabotage and economic data exfiltration will get worse without it." ...
... ** Glenn Greenwald & Murtaza Hussain of the Incercept: "The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans -- including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers -- under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies, [a]ccording to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.... It is unclear whether the government obtained any legal permission to monitor the Americans on the list.... During the course of multiple conversations with The Intercept, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence urged against publication of any surveillance targets....
In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target's real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: 'Mohammed Raghead.'
... Faisal Gill, longtime GOP operative & a surveillance target:
Jonathan Topaz of Politico: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry and President Barack Obama will meet in Texas on Wednesday to discuss the crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, a governor's spokeswoman said Tuesday."
Lauren French of Politico: "House lawmakers charged Tuesday that a culture of corruption at the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed the agency to freely retaliate against whistleblowers. At a hearing of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, lawmakers peppered four federal whistleblowers on ways to fix the VA's reputation of acting against employees who raise concerns about health care quality or fraud and said the VA needed a broad cultural change."
Jonathan Chait: "Last week, the National Education Association held a convention where it ... officially called for the resignation of Obama's secretary of education, Arne Duncan. The delicate balancing act within the Democratic coalition is beginning to fray.... Hard-liners have increasingly agitated for more direct confrontation. The leadership of this movement has fallen to Diane Ravitch, formerly a right-of-center education activist who has converted to the cause of teachers-union absolutism with an evangelical fervor...." CW: I don't know much about education, but I pegged Arne Duncan as a fraud from Day One. He just a taller Jeb Bush.
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Several major gay rights groups withdrew support Tuesday for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would bolster gay and transgender rights in the workplace, saying they fear that broad religious exemptions included in the current bill might compel private companies to begin citing objections similar to those that prevailed in" the Hobby Lobby case. "The Senate approved ENDA with bipartisan support last November.... But House Republicans have said they will not take up the bill, in part because they believe the bill's current religious exemptions aren't clear or broad enough." CW: Oh, really, people, aren't you overreacting? ...
... Ah, No. Julie David & Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work. The president has yet to sign the executive order...." ...
... Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Senate Democrats will offer legislation Wednesday morning to reverse last week's Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling on contraception coverage, though the measure has no chance of passing the House. The measure from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) seeks to stop corporations from refusing federal healthcare coverage mandates on religious grounds.... The Democrats, aware that the House would never defy the court's ruling but confident the public sides with them, want to draw the GOP into a political fight over birth control in order to energize women voters." ...
... Christian Nation. Paul Rosenberg, in Salon, does a neat job of tying the Hobby Lobby decision to crazy theocrats. Thanks to Lisa for the link. CW: You do have to wonder if the Supremes have any idea what they have wrought. I really don't think John Roberts & Anthony Kennedy are insane, yet they are perfectly happy to aid & abet the most delusional, dangerous hyper-Christians. I'm not much of a doom-&-gloom person, but it's difficult not to think the country has really lost its bearings, & the Court more than the Congress is the prime mover. ...
... CW: I can tell you the day we became a "Christian nation." It was 60 years ago: June 14, 1954, when President Eisenhower signed a bill adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. He said at the time, "From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." And that's what happened. The pledge has indoctrinated every generation of schoolchildren since. It is, ironically, a coercive, anti-American piece of work embedded in a ritual that is intended to praise our system of "liberty & justice for all."
Tom Edsall: Some recent academic studies suggest that "traditional values" -- "authoritarianism, conservatism and religiousness," are gentically-imprinted.
... Nature vs. Nurture. CW: I've read a couple of earlier studies that produced similar findings. I don't disregard the findings, but I do think sociological factors ultimately have a greater influence than genetic predispositions. If not, then black voters don't have genes. In fact, those "traditionalist" black voters who consistently vote for Democrats are following their own traditions. However, the findings do suggest that one reason for the vitriol spewed at Barack Obama is not racist; rather, it's because his political platform promised -- & did not deliver -- on fundamental change. The trick for progressives is to convince the yahoos that liberal values are traditional. That should not be too hard to do. Because they are.
Cameron Joseph of the Hill: "GOP hopes of corralling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during the 2014 primary season are officially dead. The defiant Republican's brutal criticism of Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-Miss.) reelection campaign on Tuesday -- and the involvement of a group he is technically a vice chairman of, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) -- is just the latest example of the Tea Party hero refusing to play nice. That brazen approach has exacerbated already fragile relations with establishment Republicans, who believe the freshman senator is intentionally undercutting them for no reason other than furthering his own political career." (See also Senate Races below.)
CW: I'm posting this only because the "news" here is an Internet Sensation, & I don't want to keep you people in the dark. Tom Kludt: "... Sarah Palin on Tuesday officially joined the fringe contingent of conservatives who want President Obama impeached.... After detailing Obama's 'years of abuse,' Palin not only called for impeachment, but said that politicians who oppose such action should pay a price." ...
... Steve M. "The intellectual center of the GOP is a body of conspiratorial superstition; it's a rancid stew of email forwards, right-wing media talking points, and elected officials' demagogic pronouncements Sarah Palin is reading from canonical texts when she writes that Obama is destroying the country deliberately." ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post argues that Palin's impeachment advocacy puts GOP candidates in a spot & will make the party seem extremist. (Um, because it is.) ...
Senate Races
... Meredith Shiner of Yahoo! News: "Sarah Palin might have called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama Tuesday, but Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst actually beat her to the punch by six months. At a Montgomery County, Iowa, candidate forum in January, Ernst told a crowd that she believed Obama had 'become a dictator' and that he needed to face the consequences for his executive actions, 'whether that's removal from office, whether that's impeachment.'"
Dana Milbank: "... the struggle between the Republican establishment and the tea party is no longer about ideology -- establishment figures have mostly co-opted tea party views -- but about temperament. It has become the amiable vs. the angry, the civil vs. the uncivil, a conservatism of the head vs. a conservatism of the spleen. The division now is between those who would govern and those who would sooner burn the whole place to the ground -- and, in this struggle, [Mississippi Senate primary loser Chris] McDaniel [RTP] carries a torch." ...
... Chris Moody of Yahoo! News: "The Senate Conservatives Fund on Tuesday wired $70,000 to Chris McDaniel's legal fund to investigate alleged voter fraud in last month's election between McDaniel and Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, Yahoo News has learned.... McDaniel has refused to concede the race, alleging that Cochran 'stole the election' by relying on voters who already participated in the Mississippi Democratic primary, held on June 3. His campaign opened an Election Challenge Fund to pay for a possible legal challenge and has offered a $1,000 reward to anyone with knowledge of voter fraud." CW: The president of the SFC is Ken Cuccinelli. ...
... Jonathan Topaz: "Sen. Ted Cruz is calling for an official investigation into the Republican Senate primary runoff in Mississippi between Sen. Thad Cochran and the challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. The Texas Republican on Monday evening called the runoff contest 'appalling' and said that allegations of voter fraud need to be investigated." CW: Yes, Ted, it's appalling when those people exercise the franchise. ...
... Out to Lunch & Over the Hill. Cameron Joseph: "Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) ... had a bit of trouble finding Senate Republicans' weekly luncheon on Tuesday. Cochran, while talking with The Hill, made a few wrong turns before accidentally ending up at Senate Democrats' luncheon.... Cochran didn't seem to realize he was in the wrong place until someone in the room asked him if he was planning to join the Democrats for lunch.... 'OK, so I've got to find out where ...' Cochran said before The Hill asked if he was looking for the GOP luncheon, which has been held every Tuesday in the same room for years."
Presidential Election 2016
Jonathan Chait: "In what is either a desperate bid to hold onto the core of its shrinking base, or else cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face punishment of the national media, the Republican party announced it will hold its 2016 convention in Ohio. (Cleveland, to be precise.)"
John Quincy Clinton. Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said the U.S. political system is not descending into a monarchy with the potential for another Clinton or Bush in the White House. In an interview published in the German news outlet Der Spiegel, Clinton said there have been earlier presidents with the same last name, and speculated that some families have a predisposition for elected office. 'We had two Roosevelts. We had two Adams,' she said. 'It may be that certain families just have a sense of commitment or even a predisposition to want to be in politics.'"
News Ledes
RT: "NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has filed an official petition to extend his asylum in Russia for another year.... Snowden's current term of stay in Russia expires on July 31." Via Time.
Washington Post: "A government scientist cleaning out a storage room last week at a lab on the National Institutes of Health's Bethesda campus found decades-old vials of smallpox, the second incident involving the mishandling of a highly dangerous pathogen by a federal health agency in a month. The vials, which appear to date from the 1950s, were flown Monday by government plane to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, officials said Tuesday."
Guardian: "The Islamic State extremist group (Isis) has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility north-west of Baghdad, where 2,500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with deadly nerve agent sarin or their remnants were stored along with other chemical warfare agents, Iraq has said in a letter circulated at the United Nations. The US played down the threat from the takeover, saying there were no intact chemical weapons and it would be very difficult to use the material for military purposes."
Guardian: "Disturbing images have emerged showing the shrouded bodies of some the children killed by Israeli air strikes. They are said to show the bodies of the Kaware children whose deaths were confirmed by DCI-Palestine, in an air strike against suspected militant Odeh Ahmad Mohammad Kaware...."
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Reader Comments (6)
"In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."
---Dwight Eisenhower Address at the Freedoms Foundation, Waldorf-Astoria, New York City, New York, 12/22/52
So Ike would have been OK with sharia, I suppose.
@Patrick. Thanks. "Our form of government" was devised by a number of men who did not necessarily feel "a deep religious faith," so it's pretty hard to credit Eisenhower's opinion here.
The idea that we can't manage ourselves without a "fear of God" seems ludicrous to me. Rather, a major impediment to societal harmony is people's differing beliefs in specific gods, gods they imagine have set standards by which every person should abide.
Eisenhower seems to be endorsing theocracy, not representative democracy. Let's check the news from the Middle East to see how that's working out. (And to the extent that we have become more like the Middle East, we can check today's U.S. news, too: impeachment, Hobby Lobby, Ted Cruz, etc.)
Marie
It's stunning to me that in the year 2014 we are seeing a large swath of our country willing to use "religion" as an excuse to institutionalize sexism and homophobia. This is nothing new, really, as "deeply held religious beliefs" were used to justify slavery and later, segregation. But it would have seemed that at this point in our history we would have progressed further than that - and much beyond seeing our most esteemed Court participate in this kind of injustice.
For a look at the historic uses of religion to justify inequality, and (sadly) a list of current attempts, the ACLU has a good piece:
https://www.aclu.org/using-religion-discriminate
As they point out: "While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same: religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others. "
The country, specifically the wingnut portions of it, grow more unhinged by the day.
So all of a sudden it's IMMIGRATION!! Millions of little brown children are invading our country, stealing our food, taking our jobs, and demanding social security.
Immigration has been a problem for generations. It isn't new. It's gotten this bad because Republicans refuse to do anything about it except build bigger fences and hand out more weapons. Perhaps the current crop of nationalists and xenophobes forget that millions of illegal immigrants in this country became legal all through the largesse of one Saint Ronald of Reagan. Bush also passed laws that allowed for looser immigration restrictions for children, as Marie's link, above, points out. But none of that matters to the insane who can only see Barack Obama's face in their crosshairs when they wake up, when they go to bed, when they dream.
Then it's IMPEACH! Something else that's been going on a long time. But for a feckless, semi-literate self-promoter like Sarah Palin to be given time by any news organization to rant on about idiotic bullshit like how the president is destroying the country, and not be called on the carpet by the adults is yet another piece of evidence that there is no one in charge in Right Wing World.
Ted Cruz wants an investigation. Darrell Issa wants more investigations. Rick Perry demands an investigation.
The truth of the matter is that these people do nothing. Nothing. They have nothing worthwhile to say, nothing worthwhile to do. So to take up time, they invent stuff to pull their hair out about. They make shit up to be outraged about and to rail against. It really doesn't matter. They might as well be pissed at the color purple. It's makes just as much sense as the rest of their pet outrages.
It's time for someone in the mainstream media to call bullshit on this malarkey. But it won't happen. Just like puppy dogs needing a treat, the Sunday morning jackasses will invite in the most irate peddlers of inane, untethered thinking and offer them a platform from which to hawk their snake oil.
Meanwhile, the real criminals plot the move to a theocratic state. Little Johnny and the Dwarfs are hard at work picking which elements of America will be dismantled next year, which piece of the old America will be handed over to the zealots and the theocrats and the corporatists.
Those hinges are almost off. A few more screws and they'll be completely free from reality.
And just think of what it will be like if and when the monsters take over. It will make the Bush Debacle look like the soul of judicious governance.
I can't even think about it, it's so bad.
Victoria,
Remove religion from this country, at least take away its seat at the table where decisions of great moment are made, dramatically reduce its influence in secular life, and we could be a very great country once again.
The insidious and baleful influence of the religious right weighs us down. We're like a thoroughbred forced to run a race with thousand pound weights chained around its legs.
When misused, there is no force in human history, not war, not nuclear weapons, not racism, not nationalism, that compare to religion in its ability to warp, twist, degrade, and denigrate the power of human endeavor and rational action based on rational thought. Dogmatic religiosity is like chloroform laced with hallucinogens. It makes you stupid and unable to act in your own best interests. It makes the irrational rational and discounts rationality as the work of the devil.
And there are elected officials in this country who operate daily under its influence. They should not be behind the wheel of state, but they labor mightily to rest control of the direction of this country, and the traffic cops, the Supreme Court, are on their side at every turn.
Fasten your seatbelts, girls and boys. We're driving into the Tunnel of Holiness, but unlike other tunnels, there's a way in but no way out.
If there truly is a plot to destroy America, this is where it's coming from.
From Frank Rich's mouth to (wouldn't be fitting, can't use the usual 3-letter word starting with a G here) ears? But, right on, Frank! From his latest interview over on New York mag:
"With its double-edged blade slicing away at both the rights and sexual privacy of women and gays, Hobby Lobby threatens not just the victims of the ruling but the GOP’s long-term political prospects."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/could-hobby-lobby-turn-back-gay-civil-rights.html