The Commentariat -- May 22, 2015
Internal links removed.
Paul Kane & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Republicans and a small band of Democrats rescued President Obama's trade agenda from the brink of failure Thursday, clearing a key hurdle in the Senate but leaving the final outcome in doubt. Supporters must still navigate a set of tricky-but-popular proposals that could torpedo the legislation's chances, and its fate in the House remains a tossup because Obama faces entrenched opposition from his own party." ...
... Paul Krugman: "I don't know why the president has chosen to make the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership such a policy priority.... Reasonable, well-intentioned people have serious questions about what's going on. And I would have expected a good-faith effort to answer those questions.... Instead, the selling of the 12-nation Pacific Rim pact has the feel of a snow job. Officials have evaded the main concerns about the content of a potential deal; they've belittled and dismissed the critics; and they've made blithe assurances that turn out not to be true.... The main thrust of the proposed deal involves strengthening intellectual property rights -- things like drug patents and movie copyrights -- and changing the way companies and countries settle disputes. And it's by no means clear that either of those changes are good for America.... The fact that the administration evidently doesn't feel that it can make an honest case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests that this isn't a deal we should support."
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is expected in the coming days to announce a major clean water regulation that would restore the federal government's authority to limit pollution in the nation's rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands. Environmentalists have praised the new rule, calling it an important step that would lead to significantly cleaner natural bodies of water and healthier drinking water. But it has attracted fierce opposition from several business interests, including farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and a national association of golf course owners. Opponents contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners' rights."
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "With the federal government's bulk collection of phone records set to expire in June, senators remained deeply divided on Thursday over whether to extend the program temporarily or accept significant changes that the House overwhelmingly approved last week."
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic: "'Look, 20 years from now, I'm still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it's my name on this,' [President Obama] said [to Goldberg during a interview], referring to the apparently almost-finished nuclear agreement between Iran and a group of world powers led by the United States. 'I think it's fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.'..." Read the whole post, which covers a lot of Middle East territory.
Eric Licthblau & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Karl "Rove's Crossroads PAC is no longer [the' GOP's 'big dog.'... The nonprofit arm of Crossroads is facing an Internal Revenue Service review that could eviscerate its fund-raising. Data projects nurtured by Mr. Rove are being supplanted in Republican circles by a more successful initiative funded by the Koch political network, which has leapfrogged the Crossroads organizations in size and reach. And the group faces intense competition for donors from a new wave of 'super PACs' that are being set up by backers of the leading Republican candidates for president, who are unwilling to defer to Mr. Rove's authority or cede strategic and fund-raising dominance to the organizations he helped start."
Greg Sargent: If the Supreme Court knocks out the Medicaid subsidy for states without their own exchanges, "Republicans do have a plan of sorts.... [They] may try to pass a temporary patch for the subsidies, packaged with something like the repeal of the individual mandate, in hopes of drawing a presidential veto -- so Republicans can then try to blame Obama for failing to fix the problem. Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page helpfully confirms that this idea is very much in circulation, urging Republicans to carry out this strategy. The editorial suggests Republicans rally behind plans such as the one offered by GOP Senator Ron Johnson, which would temporarily grant subsidies to those who lose them." ...
... Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "A number of states are quietly considering merging their healthcare exchanges under ObamaCare amid big questions about their cost and viability. Many of the 13 state-run ObamaCare exchanges are worried about how they'll survive once federal dollars supporting them run dry next year. Others are contemplating creating multi-state exchanges as a contingency plan for a looming Supreme Court ruling expected next month that could prevent people from getting subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal exchange."
Charles Pierce: "... anyone who wonders why Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina is an odious presence in our politics should have caught his act this week. The House Judiciary Committee was holding hearings concerning the current state of America's police as regards their relationship with communities of color.... Gowdy's questioning [of a witness] was one prolonged and demagogic sneer, listing off the names of police officers who have died in the line, and of African Americans who were killed by other African Americans.... Gowdy played every old and familiar tune on the House organ."
Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "Robert M. Gates, the president of the Boy Scouts of America and former secretary of defense, called on Thursday to end the Scouts' ban on gay adult leaders, warning the group's executives that 'we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.' Speaking at the Boy Scouts' annual national meeting in Atlanta, Mr. Gates said cascading events -- including potential employment discrimination lawsuits and the impending Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, as well as mounting internal dissent over the exclusionary policy -- had led him to conclude that the current rules 'cannot be sustained.'"
Ian Black of the Guardian: "Islamic State's victories in Palmyra and Ramadi have been painful blows for the US-led coalition in both Syria and Iraq respectively, underlining the flaws in a strategy that has been widely criticised as both wrong-headed and half-hearted." ...
... Juan Cole: "... the whole debate about 'who lost Ramadi?' assumes facts not in evidence, i.e. that Ramadi has ever been 'pacified' or somehow a United States protectorate, sort of like Guam or Puerto Rico.... So it completely escapes me why John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Boehner or Tom Cotton (who helped personally with the berlinization of Iraq) think that if only US troops had remained in country after 2011, the people of Ramadi would have been delirious with joy and avoided throwing in with radical anti-imperialist forces." ...
... Gene Robinson: "President Obama's critics are missing the point.... The simple truth is that if Iraqis will not join together to fight for a united and peaceful country, there will be continuing conflict and chaos that potentially threaten American interests. We should be debating how best to contain and minimize the threat. Further escalating the U.S. military role, I would argue, will almost surely lead to a quagmire that makes us no more secure. If the choice is go big or go home, we should pick the latter." ...
... See also Jeffrey Goldberg's interview of President Obama, linked above. ...
... if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them. -- President Obama, in the Goldberg interview
... Steve Benen: "Last week, Republicans were heavily invested in a specific talking point: don't blame George W. Bush for the disastrous war in Iraq, blame the intelligence community. This week, this has clearly been replaced with a full-throated replacement talking point: don't blame George W. Bush or the intelligence community, blame President Obama."
Charles Pierce recommends this "Frontline" documentary on the CIA torture program.
Presidential Race
Rosalind Helderman & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The Clinton Foundation reported Thursday that it has received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups. The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign. The money was paid as fees for speeches by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Foundation officials said the funds were tallied internally as 'revenue' rather than donations, which is why they had not been included in the public listings of its contributors published as part of the 2008 agreement." CW: As a slap-dash, after-the-fact, keeper of my own financial records, I appear to be overqualified to serve as the Clinton Foundation's accountant. ...
... Friends of Bigwigs. Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "Republican complaints about Clinton's wealth and connections are presumably intended to turn the left wing of the Democratic Party against her. But in November 2016 the Republican candidate for president will almost certainly be a man who will have not only accepted hundreds of millions from 'big wigs' -- just as Clinton will have -- but who will also have promised, in an age of burgeoning plutocracy and rising inequality, to engineer a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich to provide those big wigs with a windfall on their political investment.... But Clinton's policy platform ... will not, for example, take money out of middle-class voters' paychecks, undermine their health insurance, ramp up carbon pollution in their air or leave their children with additional trillions in national debt to finance better living for billionaires.... The 2016 Republican candidates are vastly superior to those of 2012.... It's unclear how much the higher quality of candidates will matter, however, because the party is very much the same. Its donors and activists continue to make demands -- more tax cuts! never compromise! -- that no rational, public-spirited candidate for national office should ever honor."
Cheap Little Rich Girl. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Twelve of about 30 people who worked on [Carly] Fiorina's failed 2010 California Senate campaign, most speaking out for the first time, told Reuters they would not work for her again.... The reason: for more than four years, Fiorina - who has an estimated net worth of up to $120 million - didn't pay them.... 'I'd rather go to Iraq than work for Carly Fiorina again,' said one high-level former campaign staffer...."
Beyond the Beltway
Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun: "Baltimore grand jury returned indictments against the six officers charged earlier this month in the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby announced Thursday. Prosecutors presented evidence to the grand jury over the course of two weeks, Mosby said. Reckless endangerment charges were added against all six officers, while false imprisonment charges against three were removed. The remaining charges are largely the same ones her office filed May 1, following an independent investigation."
Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post shows just how bad Kansas's latest punative poor law is for poor families & adds, "... the new provision limiting what the poor can do with their debit cards is causing particular problems for Kansas because it could conflict with federal rules that appear to require that states provide beneficiaries with 'adequate access' to their benefits, putting more than $100 million in funding for the program in jeopardy." CW: Think about this: the law limits beneficiaries from withdrawing more than $25/day from their debit cards, but ATMs dole out cash only in $20 increments, plus there's a fee. In addition, the poor person has to get herself to an ATM, & there may not be one in her neighborhood. And what about the kids? I guess she'll have to pay a babysitter while she walks to an ATM half-an-hour away? So $18 minus sitter fees. Try paying the rent with that.
Way Beyond
Henry McDonald of the Guardian: "Polls have opened in Ireland, where voters are making history as the republic becomes the first nation to ask its electorate to legalise gay marriage. More than 3m voters have been invited to cast ballots in Ireland's 43 constituencies, with the result to follow on Saturday. Polling stations opened at 7am BST and they close at 10pm." ...
... Douglas Dalby of the New York Times: "In 1993, Ireland was among the last countries in the Western World to decriminalize homosexuality. Some 22 years later, it could become the first to legalize same-sex marriages by popular vote.... A vote in favor is far from assured."
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Reader Comments (17)
It's not just Republicans who are trying to paint Hillary Clinton as rich and therefore part of the problem. Wolf Blitzer, in his conversation with Bernie Sanders linked May 20, tries hard to get Sanders to say Clinton is part of the 1% with the implication that having money is the problem.
FDR was very well off, but he certainly did a lot to help the real average American. Wilkinson (linked above) has it right, look at the policies. Hillary Clinton's platform is, so far, one that will help average Americans.
On a side note, I believe there is a meme out there, rich confederates saying that rich liberals should go ahead and fork over all their money, and since they aren't doing that, they must be as bad as the confederates. But clearly it's a fairness issue. Very few people will fork over all their money if they see lying cheats getting away with keeping all their money.
It appears that Richard Clark, former National Coordinator for Security, is on the same page as Juan Cole and Gene Robinson re: the crisis in Iraq and Syria driven by that powerful rag-tag group called Isis that morphed from that other group led by bin Laden who we have learned read a lot of books about national security. Here's what Clark told Chris Hayes last night during a brief interview: I'm paraphrasing here:
When we invaded Iraq, we destroyed a state. What we are seeing now are the results of having destroyed a state. People like Lindsey Graham and others who want to send in thousands more of our military to fix the problems, are just so wrong on this. Obama has asked Congress to vote on this issue, but so far they haven't done so.
Obama saying to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic: "'Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing"... if taken seriously, and I guess we should, this president believes that lives are spared or elongated or snuffed out by this God. Hmmmm, she says with distain.
@Nisky: HAVING money is not the problem although Wolf would like to make a case that it is. The problem is HOW money is ruining/running our politics . As Elizabeth Drew says in her piece (see link):
"The Citizens United ruling was one of the most blinkered Supreme Court decisions since Dred Scott."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/04/how-money-runs-our-politics/
Reading about Trey Gowdy–-the name alone gives one shivers––I recall the first time I witnessed his bumptious confrontational attitude when questioning at congressional hearings. A real show-off, I thought, and he reminded me of some slimy white thing that burrows into you and won't let go, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Well, today, problem solved. My mister is spreading a substance on the lawn called "Milky Spores" which claim to control the grubs who tend to do that burrowing bit and leave unsightly holes. The grubs eat the bacterial spores which kill them and their dead bodies produce more spores which successive generations eat and then die. Nough said.
I find it not a little disingenuous that wealthy Confederates are ripping someone for making money. Yes, the Clintons are making a ton of dough. But they're not making it by raping the environment, skimming off pensions for elderly citizens, trying to screw with their Social Security, profiting off unfair mortgages, playing fast and loose with SEC regulations, hiding their money in offshore accounts à la The Rat (at least so far as we know) to avoid paying taxes, piling up mountains of moolah by preying on people with gambling problems, or helping murderous totalitarian states develop efficient oil production systems, the better to advance their war machinery and plans for genocide.
And all three of them made $25 million in a little over a year? That's about 1/10th of what a mid level hedge fund manager makes. Sure it's a lot of money, but for most of the people supporting the Confederates, it's walking around money. It's a third of what Robert Downey, Jr. made in a few months for making "Avengers: Age of Ultron".
Now, if the Clintons were heading up a political action group scooping up money from anonymous sources and promising to pour almost a billion dollars into the next presidential election cycle in order to ram their ideology down our throats, I'd say that would be a pretty bad thing, but most of the money they've been pulling in, at least so I hear, goes to the foundation.
Another case of IOKIYAR.
Marie,
To continue with your riff on how poor people are discriminated against and actively attacked (for being poor) in Brownbackistan, most people aren't going to go to ATM's at banks because nearly all of them are drive-throughs, so they end up walking to convenience stores where ATM's are frequently out of order.
So let's say this is a single parent mom. Her kids are at home alone because she can't afford a baby sitter, or no one is around to help her even if she could pay, and she has no choice because she needs to buy them something to eat that night. Now, she has to walk to find another ATM at a different convenience store even further away. Furthermore, most of the ATM's at these places will charge upwards of $3.00 as a fee. Not very convenient. And if she has to buy her food there, she's gonna have to pay over $4.00 for a gallon of milk.
Then, after walking around for a couple of hours to find a place from which to withdraw her daily $20 (I bet Brownback spends $20 tipping his barber), she comes home to find that the DSS is taking her children away because a neighbor ratted her out for leaving her kids alone for an hour or more each day as she races around like a rat in a maze looking for the sliver of cheese Brownback has left for her and her family.
She couldn't afford to pay a babysitter because by the time she did, she'd only have $10 left which means, after the state fees and ATM fees and babysitter fees, she'd have used about $25 of her $400/month allotment. Brownback probably spends that on lunch. It also means that she has enough for a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter. Hope the kids aren't hungry. And after a few weeks of that, she will only benefit from about half of that $400, out of which she has to pay rent and utilities and buy food.
So now, her kids are gone, she's under arrest facing months or years of legal hassles and maybe jail time, and because she can't afford a lawyer, she probably loses her housing and whatever shitty job she might have had, now she'll have a record and she'll be lucky to ever see her kids again.
Mission Accomplished, Kansas. Job well done.
And all because of some apocryphal story about some poor person taking a cruise. They're doing to poor people what most of the media, like Bill O'Reilly, does to people of color. Lump them all in one vat and declare them all responsible for the sins of a few and punish all in the most draconian ways possible.
Too bad that poor lady wasn't an organized crime gangster riding a Harley shooting at people in a parking lot.
She'd get a lot more respect.
And let's not forget that Brownback and his kind never, ever, ever have to pay for their mistakes or bad decisions or willful misdeeds. No one ever lowers the boom on them and so sharply curtails their lives and limits their options.
Ever.
Where's Charles Dickens when we need him?
Two followups:
Akhilleus,
Yeah, it's ALL redistribution, businesses, taxes, charities, political PACS and the daily or weekly allowances we give our children for doing the chores, and when thinking about how we choose to move resources and wealth from one person to the next, both the mechanisms and their moral underpinnings of each invite and demand close inspection and judgment.
You would think even a Koch-Confederate could tell the difference between Walmart, which takes from those who don't have much and distributes those millions of pittances to those who have far too much, and a charity that redirects wealth from those who have too much to those who don't.
I ascribe that inability to tell the difference to a massive educational failure. Most think of "the economy" is a very limited fashion, when in fact the economy is present at every resource exchange. We have also been taught that the economy exists as something outside ourselves, I was going to say "like the weather" but that reality is shifting, too, that we have no influence on or responsibility for. These are useful myths for those who do push the economic buttons and benefit from the almost universal ignorance they have had a part in engendering.
The first Bush did have it accidentally right. It is the economy. All of it, every moment of every day.
PD. "....God". "Hmm."
As a non-believer who still comes out with a "Goddamn" now and then, I think I understand. It's just a habit, a speech pattern, something we say and hard to eliminate, even when we do notice what comes our of our mouths and try to do something about it. At times, it's almost annoying enough to make me swear.
In the President's case, smartie that he is, maybe he hoped it would come across as a Christian reference, even tho' we all know he's a Muslim.
Hi. My name is Josh Duggar and I'm a hypocritical douchebag hater like you wouldn't believe. I'm on a big TV show with my 73 brothers and sisters 'cause Christians have to have plenty of offspring to siphon off the earth's limited resources just in case the gays start rounding us up and sending us in boxcars to gay work camps where we'll all have to listen to Broadway musicals and wear clothes with rainbows on them.
A terrible fate. Besides, gay people are child molesters. Tony Perkins, friend of white supremacists and the KKK and the leader of the Family Resource Council Hate Group told me so. And he should know. He hired me after I molested children. But it was okay because, first of all, they were all little girls, and second, a whole bunch of them were my sisters.
My dad knew all about my diddling the little girls so he had me talk to one of his big Christian far-right family supporter buddies who was a state trooper, and also a child molester himself. He's in prison now for 188 years, but really he was a nice guy.
Anyway, my dad didn't care that I molested my sisters. He put us all on TV to show everyone how moral a winger Christian family could be, especially when telling everyone to have a zillion kids but not to let gays have any, because Jesus. Also, immoral.
Well, I've already told Jesus that I'm sorry. ("Sooorrrry") so now everything's cool. But evil lib'ruls have said I should resign from the Family Resource Council Hate Group because of those mean gays.
I hate them even more now.
But I'm cool with Jesus so you should let my mom and dad continue to make a bundle spreading wingnut hatred on TV, because we're Republicans, and because Freeeedom.
Thanks for watching.
Oh wait a minute, I have to take this call....who? Phil Robertson, from Duck Dynasty? Hey, what's happenin' brother? You want me to come be on your show? What's that? You'll even show me how to shoot gays? Great....be right over.
Ken,
Thanks for the very thoughtful response. You're right about how many view the "Economy" as if it were an unstoppable force of nature rather than a system of exchanges and wealth configured and controlled entirely by humans.
Confederates prefer the idea that the Economy, like Climate and things like income inequality and equal rights are out of our hands because god takes care of all that, and if you're poor and you have no job, or you're downtrodden, or your rights are routinely taken away or ignored, it's probably because you're just not right with god. And not a rich white Republican either.
The tide goes in, the tide goes out. Who can explain it?
We just have to accept it and recognize that some of us can ride out the tide on 200 ft. yachts while others are stuck in the sand, chained to the rocks hoping this is not the day they drown.
Okay....I know it might be a tad unseemly to go on about this at length, but this is just too great not to pass on. Besides Mike Huckabee is lecturing us all to forget about this and move on, so fuck him.
Child molester, pedophile, sister diddler, and Christian reality show hater Josh Duggar, is a such a glittering star in the Confederate firmament, that anyone who has ever dreamed of taking a torch to certain Constitutional amendments and destroying the barrier between church and state, has had their picture taken with this depraved shithead.
Li'l Randy, Rick Savonarola, Bobby Jindal, JEB BUSH! Reince Priebus, Joni (I'll cut their balls off!) Ernst, Scott (Yes Mr. Koch, right away, Mr. Koch) Walker, Mike Huckabee (who is now calling for everyone to forget all about the sexual depravity because "We all make mistakes". Sorry Mike, a mistake is not spelling a word correctly. A mistake is making the wrong turn off the highway. Sexually abusing your own sisters is not a MISTAKE, you idiot), Ted Cruz, Princess Dumbass, all these holier than thou, family first motherfuckers have been getting in line to sidle up to Josh the Molester.
Don't you wonder, while he was having his picture took with all these luminaries, whether he ever contemplated the incredible hypocrisy of it all? Does that creepy smirk he wears in every picture mean he was ruminating about what a fraud he is and how he should be in jail and not hobnobbing with Confederate Elite?
Nah. Probably never did.
Okay, one more, on a more serious note.
It's bad enough that this idiot, Josh Duggar, sexually abused his sisters, among other young girls, and that his family covered this up, that he was never charged with anything, and that he was then given a prestigious position as executive director of FRC Action, the non-profit and tax-exempt legislative action arm of Family Research Council.
What, you might ask, were his qualifications for such a position in a multimillion dollar DC lobbying organization? I mean, besides fondling young girls against their will?
There appear to be three. He praises Jesus all the time, he's on TV pretending to be a holy roller, and he sold used cars.
That's it.
But this is a much larger problem that has affected too many aspects of public life in this country, the fact that on the basis of nothing more than strong religious affiliation (but only Christianity), people will be hired for serious positions of responsibility.
George W. Bush hired kids just out of college who had helped fundraising efforts for his campaign, but who were also staunch Christian conservatives, to serve in important roles during the early occupation of Iraq. We all know just how well that went.
Plenty of total incompetents--many who are borderline, or over the line idiots--have been elected to congress and are now vying for the presidency purely on the basis of their loudly professed attachment to conservative Christianity, which bases much of its public policy in hate and ignorance.
It's way past time to insist that people who hold roles of public responsibility be held to higher standards than how well they can spit out Bible verses.
Schadenfreude Pt.2
I know, I know, I'm doing the monopolizing thing again. Just one more then I'm done.
I thought you'd want to hear about this seeing as it's Friday and we need the occasional burst of good, or at least humorous, news.
An international survey has been completed asking respondents to name the worst, most evil people in history and the best most admired in history as well.
First the good guys:
Top ten heroes:
1. Albert Einstein
2. Mother Theresa
3. Mahatma Ghandi
4. Martin Luthur King
5. Isaac Newton
6. Jesus Christ
7. Nelson Mandela
8. Thomas Edison
9. Abraham Lincoln
10. Buddha (but not the Aqua kind)
So, okay, there are a number of religious figures, but number one is still a scientist.
Okay, now the slimiest, evilest scumbags, evah:
The top ten villians:
1. Adolf Hitler
2. Osama bin Laden
3. Saddam Hussein
4. George W Bush
5. Joseph Stalin
6. Mao Zedong
7. Vladimir Lenin
8. Genghis Khan
9. Saladin
10. Qin Shi Huang
Did you catch number 4? The Decider! Worse than Stalin, Mao, and Lenin. But not quite as bad as Hitler.
Tee-hee.
The survey was done with input from 7,000 students in 37 countries, and very possibly the results were somewhat skewed because the average age of respondents was 23.
Had it been older, Bush might have made it to number 3.
AK -
Fret not about the whole monopolizing thing. Your comments are one of the best things about this most excellent site (apologies to Marie and all of the rest of you who also make this place so great)
I think I mentioned that the Arkansas state trooper, Jim Hutchens, who gave Josh Duggar a stern talking to (after not charging him with anything), was himself a child molester.
Not true.
He's doing 56 years for child pornography.
Je suis désolé, ex-trooper Hutchens. I didn't mean to smear you like that.
Nonetheless, the perfect guy to give the actual molester, Duggar, the all clear and the "go my son and sin no more (unless you get that urge, know what I mean?") speech.
Re the good/bad poll: How does Cheney avoid his place on that list? Must be the defense-contractor-issued Teflon (TM) undies, shirt, _and_ suit coat.
Rockygirl,
Aww....thanks. Much appreciated. Couldn't do it without Marie. I'd just be flying around cyberspace, throwing firebombs (I was gonna say "Molotov cocktails" but Scott Walker would think that's a drink you have when you wish someone good luck...) at crazy wingers, with no place to call home.
And without such excellent companions.
Re: the survey of the good and the evil: One woman? Really????? But, of course, not surprising. I am surprised Superman didn't make the grade.
@Ken: I hear you, BUT––to me there is a big difference between our Goddamns, our Jesus Christs!, and "God willing" or "by the grace of God, go I." I think Obama might actually "believe" which for a "smartie" like he is it's always a puzzle––––HOWEVER-––there is no way in hell in this day and age we would have a president that didn't embrace the WORD––and that's the way of it.