The Commentariat -- Nov. 10, 2014
Internal links removed.
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama arrived [in Beijing] on Monday morning for a three-day visit that will capture the complexities of the United States-China relationship: the tensions of a rising power confronting an established one, as well as the promise that the world's two largest economies could find common cause on issues like climate change."
E. J. Dionne: "... don't misread the internal Republican debate. It is not a fight between pristine souls who just want to show they can govern and fierce ideologues who want to keep fighting. Both GOP camps want to strengthen the conservatives' hand for 2016. They differ on how best to accomplish this." As the National Review editors suggested, "in other words, that spending two more years making Obama look bad should remain the GOP's central goal, lest Republicans make the whole country ready for Hillary Clinton. [Dionne's interpretation.] This is the prevailing view among conservatives.... The president and his party -- including Clinton -- must find a way of touting their stewardship while advancing a bold but realistic agenda that meets the demands of Americans who are still hurting."
Lame Ducks Can't Quack -- Ted & Mike's Excellent Theory. Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "The same day that President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch to be the next attorney general, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) signaled that it won't be an easy process. 'President Obama's Attorney General nominee deserves fair and full consideration of the United States Senate, which is precisely why she should not be confirmed in the lame duck session of Congress by senators who just lost their seats and are no longer accountable to the voters,' the senators said in a Saturday statement." ...
... Steve M.: "... unless Lynch denounces the man who appointed her, they're going to raise holy hell.... They'll block her. Bet on it." ...
... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Privately, McConnell aides say they are less concerned these days about the impact of senators like Mr. Cruz, whom they describe as an 'army of one.' Mr. McConnell believes his standing with conservative voters is solid.... He and his allies dismiss their Tea Party opponents as 'for-profit conservatives' because of the fund-raising they do in the name of purifying the Republican brand."
Paul Krugman: "... it now appears possible that the Supreme Court may be willing to deprive millions of Americans of health care on the basis of an ... obvious typo.... The fact that the suit is ridiculous is no guarantee that it won't succeed -- not in an environment in which all too many Republican judges have made it clear that partisan loyalty trumps respect for the rule of law.... Now, states could avoid this death spiral by establishing exchanges -- which might involve nothing more than setting up links to the federal exchange.... Judges who support this cruel absurdity ... are ... corrupt, willing to pervert the law to serve political masters. And what we'll find out in the months ahead is how deep the corruption goes." ...
... CW: This is almost exactly what I wrote in Saturday's Commentariat. ...
... Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post's professional wingnut blogger, makes the conservative case for Typo-Law. CW: I highly recommend your reading her post because it gives a good summary of how the right sees the King v. Burwell case. This view matters because John Roberts. ...
... Abbe Gluck, in ScotusBlog, argues that if the conservatives decide for the plaintiffs, they will be undermining their own 30-years effort to persuade "even their opponents of the jurisprudential benefits of a sophisticated interpretive approach" to reading laws. CW: Yeah? It's ObummerCare! It is forcing Americans to eat broccoli!
Soumya Karlamangla & Chad Terhune of the Los Angeles Times: "... roughly 600,000 Latinos in California ... remain uninsured -- despite qualifying for subsidized coverage under the federal health law.... Some residents are nervous about answering detailed questions about family members who aren't applying, and they worry that turning over this information could lead to deportation for spouses, siblings or other relatives.... California officials, sensing continued reluctance from people such as the Saldanas, are tackling the immigration fears directly for the first time in new TV ads."
ObamaCare Rollout 2.0. Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "With the next time to buy health plans under the Affordable Care Act starting in less than a week, the Obama administration is expressing confidence that HealthCare.gov is no longer the rickety online insurance marketplace that exasperated consumers a year ago. Behind the scenes, however, federal health officials and government contractors are scrambling, according to confidential documents and federal and outside experts familiar with this work. They have been making contingency plans in case the information technology or other aspects prove less sturdy than the administration predicts. And some preparations are coming down to the wire."
Evan McMurry of Mediaite: "Former President George W Bush told Bob Schieffer Sunday morning that he had no regrets over the decision to invade Iraq. Bush was on to discuss his new book praising his father (and to honor Face The Nation'ss sixtieth anniversary). 43 insisted he did not invade Iraq to finish what his father started, and said he was surprised when Saddam Hussein called his bluff over the invasion...."
Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post reviews Chuck Todd's book about President Obama: "'The Stranger' is not an evolution of the Chuck Todd brand but a celebration of it. Todd has written a daily rundown of the Obama presidency, with every moment, critical or trivial, assessed by its political weight.... This book, though critical of the president, reveals less about Obama than about what the world looks like through the eyes of a writer for whom politics ... is the only thing.... Todd's attempts to peer deep inside Obama as an individual don't take us far.... As befitting a political junkie chronicle, the book is generous with political cliches.... 'The Stranger' ... is all microscope and zero telescope." ...
... Here's the Thing, Chuck. Charles Blow: "Some people blame the president for not cultivating more congressional relationships, across the aisle and even in the Democratic caucus.... No amount of glad-handing and ego-stroking would compensate for the depths of the opposition. Nor would messaging. This is a president who was elected by an increasingly diverse national electorate that some find frightening, a president who is pushing a somewhat liberal agenda that some have found intrinsically objectionable, and a president who is battling some historical personality tropes that many cannot abandon. To his opponents, this president's greatest sins are his success and his self." ...
AND Haley Barbour Is Still in Mississippi. James Hohmann & Ken Vogel of Politico: "Haley Barbour called President Barack Obama's policies 'tar babies' on a post-election conference call for clients of his lobbying firm.... According to a person on the call, 'And then he said there is no one who will run for president who will endorse Obama's issues, because Obama's issues are "tar babies."'... [Barbour wrote to Politico,] 'If someone takes offense, I regret it. But, again, neither the context nor the connotation was intended to offend.' CW: Who could possibly be offended? The Politico writers call "tar babies" part of Barbour's "folksy Southern style." Ha ha. Why not call it a "folksy racial slur"? Barbour has long been "folksy" about racism.
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a rash of incidents this fall in which thrill-seekers with small, camera-toting drones have violated airspace restrictions by swooping over large outdoor sporting events. The problem has become most common at football games.... FAA officials and aviation safety experts say the small drones pose a serious hazard in crowded areas.... In addition..., people who fly the remote-control aircraft for fun are causing problems near airports by flying dangerously close to passenger planes.... In a public notice issued Oct. 27, the FAA updated a long-standing ban on airplane flights over open-air stadiums with 30,000 or more spectators by extending the prohibition to 'unmanned aircraft and remote controlled aircraft.'" ...
... CW: Unmentioned in Whitlock's article: the public cost incurred in policing drones flying over these for-profit football games.
Noam Scheiber of the New Republic writes a long piece on Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. Scheiber thinks he "understands" her now. Here's the point:
... Jarrett and Obama share [a worldview] -- call it 'boardroom liberalism.' It's a worldview that's steeped in social progressivism, in the values of tolerance and diversity. It takes as a given that government has a role to play in building infrastructure, regulating business, training workers, smoothing out the boom-bust cycles of the economy, providing for the poor and disadvantaged. But it is a view from on high -- one that presumes a dominant role for large institutions like corporations and a wisdom on the part of elites. It believes that the world works best when these elites use their power magnanimously, not when they're forced to share it.
Today's History Lesson. Michael Schulson of Salon interviews Edward Baptist, the author of a history of slavery titled The Half Has Never Been Told. Slavery, after all, is a cost-efficient way to extract labor from human beings. It's an exceptionally brutal flavor of capitalism. And it worked: In 1860, the U.S.'s four wealthiest states were all in the deep South. After the Civil War, though, white Americans found ways to downplay the profit motive." As safari suggests, this interview well might be catalogued under "Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd." ...
... CW: Baptist puts the lie to the mythologized notion of pleasantly-humming "plantations." Worth remembering: the Second Amendment to the Constitution is the direct result of the states' desires to put down slave rebellions, which for some odd reason were numerous & frequent. Is it any wonder that today's white Southerners & their conservative enablers everywhere are so fond of it?
Charles Pierce on Pope Francis's demotion of Raymond Cardinal Burke. "This is absolutely freaking hilarious. It's like somebody went to John Roberts and said, 'OK, Your Honor. Now, you're the new head judge of the Miss Lowndes County Sorghum Pageant.'" And Pierce has a great time deflating Ross Douthat's ecclesiastical balloon doll.
November Elections
** Jason Zengerle in the New Republic: The election-day losses of the last of the Southern white Democrats "hurts African-Americans the most.... Lacking white politicians with whom they can build coalitions, black politicians are increasingly rendered powerless.... All eight Democrats in the Alabama Senate now represent majority-black districts, while all 26 Republican Senators represent majority-white districts -- and all 26 are themselves white."
Dark Money Rules. New York Times Editors: "The next Senate was just elected on the greatest wave of secret, special-interest money ever raised in a congressional election. What are the chances that it will take action to reduce the influence of money in politics? Nil, of course. The next Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has long been the most prominent advocate for unlimited secret campaign spending in Washington, under the phony banner of free speech.... The single biggest outside spender on his behalf was a so-called social welfare group calling itself the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, which spent $7.6 million on attack ads against his opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes.... What is its social welfare purpose, besides re-electing Mr. McConnell? It has none. Who gave that money? It could have been anyone who wants to be a political player but lacks the courage to do so openly.... You can bet, however, that the senator knows exactly to whom he owes an enormous favor." ...
... CW: Thanks, Supremes! And a special shout-out to the IRS for its incomprehensibly generous (and unlawful) definition of "social welfare organizations."
Presidential Race
Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker takes a long look at Hillary Clinton's 2016 prospects. "Tuesday's results, which gave Republicans control of both the House and the Senate, may solidify her standing, as Democrats close ranks around her in an effort to hang on to the White House, their last foothold on power in Washington. But the election results could also lead to an entirely different outcome: a Republican Party that overinterprets its mandate in Congress and pushes its Presidential candidates far to the right, freeing Democrats to gamble on someone younger or more progressive than Clinton."
Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "Former President George W. Bush said in an interview broadcast Sunday that chances are '50-50' that his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) will run for president in 2016."
See Scott Run. Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has become the latest senior Republican to hint at running for president.... Asked in an NBC interview about a pledge he made only last month to serve all four years as governor, Walker backtracked: 'I said my plan was for four years. I've got a plan to keep going for the next four years. But, you know, certainly I care deeply about not only my state, but my country. We'll see what the future holds.'"
News Ledes
AP: "Last week's high-stakes mission to retrieve two Americans jailed in North Korea was delayed by nearly two days because the aircraft carrying Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Pyongyang broke down, U.S. officials said Monday. The problem is just the latest issue with the Air Force's fleet of Boeing jets. Similar incidents have plagued Secretary of State John Kerry in recent months, forcing him to fly commercially in at least two instances. But none of those delays have hampered such a sensitive diplomatic mission."
New York Times: "Craig Spencer, the New York City doctor who became the first person in the city to test positive for Ebola, is free of the virus and is set to be released from Bellevue Hospital Center on Tuesday, hospital officials said on Monday."
Bloomberg News: "U.S. and Iraqi officials are working to determine if recent airstrikes may have injured or killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was targeted along with other senior members of the Sunni extremist group." The Guardian report, which is also inconclusive, is here.
Washington Post: "The urgent quest for a breakthrough in talks to rein in Iran’s nuclear capacity led negotiators to meet into the night Sunday with a deadline looming over their heads."
New York Times: "... a report by a British nonprofit research organization, the European Leadership Network..., recorded almost 40 incidents in the past eight months involving Russian forces in a 'volatile standoff' with the West that 'could prove catastrophic at worst.' The incidents were all said to have taken place since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March." The Guardian's report is here. The ELN report is here.
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Reader Comments (34)
I seldom remove comments about public figures, even when the comments are highly critical & of a nature the writer probably wouldn't direct at his subject in a face-to-face meeting at a cocktail party.
A comment to yesterday's thread was a brief catalog of scatological slurs about a person who is only a quasi-public figure & who, as far as I can tell, has been an upstanding professional person. I removed the comment.
Since the subject of yesterday's mini-diatribe had made solicited comments to a wire service, his remarks are fair game, and one can certainly disagree with those remarks here. However, the commenter did not do that; he just launched an ad hominem attack against someone whom most Reality Chex readers -- myself included -- know nothing about except what could be found on the Internet by Googling the subject's C.V.
I'm sure there are plenty of sites where random, anonymous fly-by attacks on individuals will live forever, but this isn't one of them.
Marie Burns
..." 'The Stranger' ... is all microscope and zero telescope."
Love this line! And the notion that Todd's psychological "peering" into Obama does not "take us far." I think that is code for shallow. Carlos Lozada says very carefully what will surprise none of us: that Tuck Chodd's book tells us more about himself and how he sees Obama and the world than it does about Obama, the man. In other words, a nasty hunk of projection.
I hope Rachel Maddow figures out what an unimpressive player her MSNBC cohort is, if she has not already.
Since McConnell has already brought up the Keystone XL Pipeline, I guess the Koch brothers are already calling in for favors in return for all that secret money. I'm sure there'll be more reminders of who's calling the shots for the next two years.
One more irony (a species alive, well and flourishing these days):
At the same time Pope Francis is trying to shove the most outrageous and embarrassing Catholic bishops behind the curtain (they apparently don't have lifetime appointments), the SCOTUS Catholic contingent is doing even more public harm to the Catholic brand. Now we all wait for the gang of five to push a few more millions off the health insurance rolls, once again interpreting that brother's keeper thing to mean their God's plan is to keep as many as possible are born so they can add to the Hobbesian masses of the unhealthy and the poor.
Know the Pope can't demote a SCOTUS, but if he tried it loudly and in public, I'd kiss his ring.
Noony Mouse
I think you have some facts wrong. I don't think there was a campaign promise to prosecute those who brought on the financial crisis. The unraveling didn't start in earnest until late (October?) 08 and the focus was to project calm (unlike McCain) and how to keep all financial markets from crashing. There was a lot of heavy-duty planning and pushing to do on a stimulus package. Certainly nobody knew enough before the election to be calling for prosecutions.
That 60 seat majority? It lasted less than six months - six months that were very turbulent. Franken's election took forever. That miserable weasel, Liberman, was part of the 60 and Kennedy was dying and dead before the cloture vote.
I also don't think he ever promised to prosecute the torturers. He promised to end it and he did. The recent issues of forced feedings are another matter. I suspect it is correct to call their methods as punitive but I don't think it is equivalent to waterboarding. I don't know if forced feeding shows up on the Geneva Conventions.
I asked who should be fired. You came back with Holder and Geithner. I'm sure you know Holder has resigned and Geithner is long gone. So my question remains. Who should be fired that would have made a difference in THIS election?
Your complaint about your tax dollars going to private insurance companies in order to subsidize those who cannot afford insurance? Next time vote Republican.
You expected Medicare for all? My cynical self dismisses that as hopeless naivete, but who knows, maybe the Supremes over-reach that destroys ACA will begin a march to Medicare for all as it forces Americans to realize that the old healthcare system is unsustainable. If that is the case, that legacy will be listed under "Obama".
@Haley Simon: Thanks for your fact-checks above. It is easy to project onto a president the failures of Congress, which is precisely what we saw large chunks of the voting public do last week. That liberals do the same thing isn't exactly surprising.
That any healthcare reform got through our corrupt Congress is close to a miracle. In fact, the current legal threat to the ACA is a result of the Congressional process failure: an imperfect bill passed into law because Scott Brown's election precluded House-Senate conference repairs to the House-passed bill. If & when the Supremes uphold the plaintiffs' side in King v. Burwell, Scottie can stand on the front porch of his new house in Maine & rightly boast -- as he has many times in the past -- that he saved us from ObummerCare.
In addition, as much as I would have liked "Medicare for All" & think it would have been a much better system, it also could have created a major disruption for the millions of voters who already had health insurance, & the screams of "socialized medicine," which Medicare is, would have been truthful. In a more liberal environment, where the GOP was just a wild-assed minority of Luddites, Medicare for All would be a possibility; right now it is not. (I think eventually we will get there, but probably not in my lifetime.) The idea that a president can "lead" by doing what the public doesn't want is naive; there is a high political price for forcing good policies on an unenlightened public. BTW, could John Roberts have found an arcane legal excuse to strike down Medicare for All? I have every confidence he could have & would have.
It also seems to be easy to project our own wishes on the president. Yeah, most liberals -- myself included -- would love to have seen big bankers doing the perp walk. A different president (certainly not Hillary!) & a different AG might have made that happen. Given our current campaign system (the win most often goes to the highest bidder), I seriously doubt Obama would have won in 2012.
Should the Obama administration have done more to help the victims of the big banks? Absolutely. That was a real failure, but again, there was little public support for it. The Tea party movement is, in part, a response against doing more to help the victims of the banks' misdeeds. Rick Santelli is awfully proud of starting the Tea party with his rant against helping the millions of people who got snookered into bad loans. I don't think he is the real catalyst for the movement -- I think the Tea party is mostly a racist reaction to a black president -- but Santelli's selfishness schtick is an important element of it. (The fact that a disproportionate percentage of the banks' victims were ethnic minorities exacerbated the Tea party backlash.)
I have always been of two minds about "prosecuting the torturers." It is quite natural to want to do that; on the other hand, it is dangerous for the opposing party to prosecute the main perps of a previous administration. Ford could have prosecuted Nixon; I don't think Obama could have prosecuted Bush & Cheney. Furthermore, had there been trials, I think both of those guys & other top dogs could have got off with plausible-deniability defenses. Again, there was little public clamor for persecuting the persecutors, & doing so would have been -- besides setting a dangerous precedent -- an unpopular move. So President Romney.
In short, Obama has been a realist -- to a fault, one could reasonably argue. But to pretend he made promises he didn't or that he could have forced Congress to pass legislation it didn't see fit to pass is to deny both historical facts & political realities.
So thanks again, Ms. Simon, for your Reality Chex.
Marie
Maybe list this one under "Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd.?"
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/09/it%E2%80%99s_symbolic_annihilation_of_history_and_it%E2%80%99s_done_for_a_purpose_it_really_enforces_white_supremacy_edward_baptist_on_the_lies_we_tell_about_slavery/
An interesting note that jumped off the page:
"The average enslaved person picked cotton four times as quickly in 1860 as in 1800."
I agree that the EJ Dionne is worth reading, but the words: "in other words, that spending two more years making Obama look bad should remain the GOP’s central goal, lest Republicans make the whole country ready for Hillary Clinton..." are Dionne's paraphrase of the National Review's editorial titled "The Governing Trap."
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392082/governing-trap-editors
I believe it is a reasonable paraphrase but of course they don't come straight out and say it that way. Such patriots.
@Nisky Guy. Thanks. That wasn't at all clear in the way I condensed it. I hope I made it a little better.
Marie
OK an Ebola update. All of the 177 people who were in contact with the patient or infected nurses either at home or hospital are free from quarantine or check up. No one from Ohio or airplane who had 'contact' with the infected nurse has symptoms. No one who was at the bowling alley with Dr. Spencer is infected and not even his girlfriend who I am guessing had serious contact when he first returned home. Nurse Kaci is officially free to have pizza at a restaurant.
So just like the real experts said would happen, the only people who were infected were the two nurses in contact with the patient with very serious symptoms.
And since the election is over, I believe this is the only complete update on the subject in the entire country.
P.S. and do you see how easy it is to cause panic with lies told to the ignorant. And remember, ignorance is not just IQ. In this, and many other cases, it is called putting your mind in hiding. And it is so easy in America when the problem comes from that country, Africa.
@CW: Looks good. I had a hard time reading through the NR editorial, had to stop and start a couple of times, but as you very rightly say about Jennifer Rubin's column, we've got to be aware of arguments and opinions that have traction in other quarters.
@Marvin Schwalb. You're right. I Googled Ebola news, & the only U.S. national stories were about Kaci Hickox's leaving Maine. There were a couple of local stories about possible Ebola victims, and the CBS Dallas TV station has a piece: "Dallas calmly marked the end of its Ebola crisis on Friday when the last of the 177 people who were being monitored for symptoms of the deadly virus were to be cleared at midnight."
Since I don't watch the national news, I don't know if any of them covered the story, but if they did, I don't think they accompanied their coverage with a print story.
Marie
Marvin,
"...and do you see how easy it is to cause panic with lies told to the ignorant."
Quite.
And to demonstrate this phenomenon in action, I have uncovered some video of various and sundry right-wing pols and pundits at the height of the Ebola hysteria which, now that they don't need that handy bogeyman, has been tossed aside like it was nothing but a cruel canard. Oh...wait...
Anyway..
Here it is. You will be forgiven, however, if you mistake this for a taped session of the Republican controlled House Committee on Science. I think I also see Jim Inhofe in that mob somewhere.
We're not scientists but we know scary shit when we see it!! Be AFRAID! Until we don't need you anymore, that is...
Fascinating longish read, worth some source-checks:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106
Barbarossa,
Right you are about McConnell having been presented with his tab. Jowly Boy will have to pay up. So will Scott Walker and pretty much all of the Republicans benefiting from Johnny Roberts' Jackpot for Jerks. Which means....um, pretty much all of them.
The pipeline monstrosity, which will not benefit a single average American but which will further pad the ermine lined pockets of the Koch gangsters is only one of many "favors" owed by the wingnuts.
Plenty more are written in the right-wing billionaire donors' Domesday Book.
Republicans are working for the betterment of the American public in pretty much the same way as a deadly virus. Except in this instance, the virus didn't come from Africa, it came from Wichita.
After both teaching and using thermodynamics for a career, I can't resist posting a link to this entertaining and provocative essay, even while wondering about a couple of possibly false analogies. However, his grasp of the two laws is credible; hope you enjoy it as much as I did:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/07/entropy-and-empire/
Ken,
I'd be right behind you, brother.
This pope is pretty amazing, not so say surprising, considering the general direction of the Vatican over the last generation or more, during which time the protectors of rapists--and plenty of rapists themselves, the haters, and those of wizened minds and spirits were exalted over anyone with a conscience or a heart. I can just see Ratzinger, his red ex-popey shoes scuffed to a frazzle from kicking himself that he stepped down and let this new guy in to overturn his fascist ship of state. He probably sounds like the Wicked Witch with every new expression of concern from the Vatican for the poor, the dispossessed, and those previously considered unclean by the far-right lords of the Church.
"All my beautiful wickedness is gone! Oh, I'm melting!"
Sorry pal, don't let that screen door to hell hit you in the ass whenever you finally shuffle off this mortal coil.
You go, Francis!
The coming Loretta Lynching (sorry, couldn't resist) will be brought to you by years of public desensitization to Republican intransigence and outrageous politicization which long ago crossed the line into incontestable treason.
In any other time and place, the automatic blocking of presidential nominees, especially for a position like the AG, would be the stuff of impeachment for any and all conspirators.
Now it's just another day in GOP land. Ho-hum. Brian Williams will dutifully report that Republican lawmakers have "questions" for Ms. Lynch. Like what's your favorite color.
Automatic obstruction is the order of the day and will be. Obama would have to nominate Savonarola just to get a hearing.
This is unacceptable and should be roundly ripped by the press and every responsible citizen. I mean, look at the irresponsible incompetents allowed to serve in positions of responsibility under Republican presidents!! They got their guys. Obama should get his. But he won't because he's got to deal with flaming teenage assholes like Cruz and Mike fucking Lee.
But according to Steve M. (see the link above), the press, especially the thugs on the right masquerading as the press, already have their knives sharpened before the nominee has even opened her mouth. Breitbart assholes have tied her to Whitewater, for fuck's sake. Whitewater!
Talk about entropy and empire!
But Ms. Lynch has too many things going against her.
In the first place, they won't like her 'cause she's black. In the second place, she's a woman, in the third place she's smart and very competent, in the fourth place, they didn't like her in the first place.
She also has successfully prosecuted political corruption. A non starters for corrupt politicians.
The coming show trial of Loretta Lynch should be roundly dismissed as the corrupt political clown show it is.
But I'll bet Chuck Todd is already with his own "questions" for Ms. Lynch: Why is your favorite color black, Ms. Lynch? That doesn't fill us white expert commentators with confidence, you know. I mean look at what a pain in the ass Obama has been!
Can I hear again about all the successful outreach programs the Republican Party has in mind for luring black voters into its ranks?
@Akhilleus: Also, one of the people Lynch is prosecuting is that nice Republican Congressman Michael Throw-Reporters-from-the-Balcony Grimm. According to the Staten Island Advance, Grimm's attorney "is 'disturbed and quite concerned' that Ms. Lynch is leaving her post because it means she has been having conversations about it for a while and in doing so, being a political player, which he said presents a conflict of interest."
Marie
Now that the booger eaters have seen how quickly the rightie-rights on the Supreme Court hippity-hopped to take the "highly dubious" ACA challenge, and may base their upending of a successful program--not supported by the eaters--on what might be nothing more than a freaking typo, the kooks are pulling every dust covered book off the shelves looking for similarly bogus excuses for Supreme Court evisceration.
Oh, look! This 1865 congressional document in support of ending slavery has a typo. Looks like the country approved a constitutional amendment ending "savory", not slavery. That means certain herbs will be illegal but black people go back in chains.
Hurrah for right-wing "research"!
The court sees this as an opportunity to right a terrible historical wrong and has placed this challenge to the 13th amendment at the top of the docket. Not only does this solve the bad herb problem, but now they really can make watermelon jokes about President Field Hand.
Hey, the law's the law, as Johnny Roberts likes to say.
More "research" on the way! Whoa! That doesn't say women's suffrage, it says women's surfing. Okay, they all get surf boards but not the vote.
Marie,
Oh, cry me a freakin' river.
These slimeballs don't miss a trick. "Oh, hey, she read a newspaper once, she can spell polysyllabic words, AND she's not a moron! UNFAIR to our guy!"
The sad thing is, these arguments not only gain traction these days, they win. Just like a corrupt gangster congressman who threatens to murder people who piss him off can win re-election.
Not sure that Loretta Lynch is who we hope she is. According to Charlie Gibson, she was employed by two law firms that defended white collar crime, and she is a good friend to banksters. I fear we
may be getting another Eric Holder--only more so. See what you think.
readersupportednews.org/.../26860-focus-the-republican-senate-will-love- loretta-lynch
Sorry--the previous link did not work. Also, I called Carl Gibson "Charlie." Must have been thinking of Charlie Pierce. Try this link:
FOCUS | The Republican Senate Will Love Loretta Lynch
In response to Marie's comment about my qualifications to comment about ancient grains last week: for me with 30 years in the food business, yet undegreed, I don't know exactly what to say about 'being qualified enough'. I ran across a couple things that appear to me to show the deep waters of 'qualifications'. http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/09/02/new-yorker-editor-david-remnick-responds-to-vandana-shiva-criticism-of-michael-specters-profile/. As a listener to public radio, I know the name and some of the activities of Vandana Shiva. As a frequent reader of Mother Jones and Tom Philpott, his article about the above author is interesting reading. http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine.
Why do I care, why do you care? The nature of "qualified" is about integrity and facts independent of opinion. So much of what I read here at RC is about integrity and facts and the eternal struggle to let facts find the light of day before the bullshit shades facts into a stunted form. Thanks, Marie. P.S. " ... CW: This is almost exactly what I wrote in Saturday's Commentariat. " Maybe Krugman reads RC.
Well, I was all ready to do a rain dance rant about something, but I figured Charlie Pierce would have beat me to it.
And so he has.
But here's the incredible, mind-shattering, lying piece of shitiness that got my Irish up.
The Decider, the guy who has had everything handed to him, except for maybe those animals he used to torture to death in the backyard as a 30 year old, went on the TV yesterday with Bob "I know nothing" Schieffer, to say that he earned everything he ever got. Everything. His daddy never got him a cushy spot in the Texas Air National Guard, he was never handed those businesses he ran into the ground, Jebby didn't help rig the election in Florida when that meany Al Gore was ready to win, and the Supreme Court never handed him the keys to the White House. And that war? He earned that too.
And then, President "WMD's Let's Go to War!" says this:
"In the older days — I hate to be one of these guys who talk about the old days — you’re able to do that yourself, by the way — people were held to account for what they said. In other words, there was a pushback. Now there’s just so much stuff out there, flotsam out there, that people say what they feel like saying without any consequence."
Just fucking kill me now. How's this for no consequences for saying whatever the Christ you feel like? Millions dead, displaced, tortured, maimed, and trillions lost, while you loll in a hammock and paint pictures of your fucking toes. Then go on TV to lecture everyone about hard work and honesty.
Boys and girls, there just HAS to be a special ring of hell for this guy! There has to be. Please, please, please, flying spaghetti monster, hear my prayer.
I know I said I wasn't going to rant, but...ARRRGGGHHH!!
Maybe you can help me with this, Marie. My techie skills are worse than I thought. The links I gave in the previous 50 posts all worked for me, but did not translate to RC Comments. I am going to try one more, then go jump off the cliff outside my house. ):
FOCUS | The Republican Senate Will Love Loretta Lynch
1 day ago ... Carl Gibson, RSN. ... Gibson writes: "President Obama's nomination of Loretta Lynch as Eric ... By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News.
readersupportednews.org/.../26860-focus-the-republican-senate-will-love- loretta-lynch
Kate,
the correct url is
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26860-focus-the-republican-senate-will-love-loretta-lynch
whereas the one you posted is
readersupportednews.org/.../26860-focus-the-republican-senate-will-love- loretta-lynch
The .... between / and / is substituted for essential text.
Something in your copy/paste. Did you highlight the entire url, then copy and paste, or copy url from hypertext? The former should always work.
@Whyte Owen-
Many, many thanks to you for your free internets lesson! I have copied it to my "Remember" file and will not make the same mistake again......probly. Also, you have saved me from deciding to jump off the big cliff--which is a good thing. The water is ridiculously cold, and my (outdated) scuba gear is in storage.
Newsflash: The number of Ebola patients in the U.S. is now officially zero. I'm sure the Republicans are all over it. Thanks, Obama!
(And all the best to the brave and altruistic N.Y. doctor. May he bowl 300. )
Akhilleus, you right, the human mind today in America is in most cases the same as the medieval mind. Oh BTW I think you got these names wrong (Cruz and Mike fucking Lee). I think its Ted Ooze and Mike Schmuckabee.
AND special thanks to Haley Barbour (Barely Harbor) for clearly demonstrating what the phrase Southern Republican really means.
Please tell me Krugman has been on a diet. He is noticeably thinner in his NYT picture.
THIS IS FOR SAFARI: Maher has lots of fun with Kansas and why Dorothy doesn't want to go there anymore:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/25/1339078/-MUST-SEE-Bill-Maher-asks-what-s-the-matter-with-Kansas?detail=email
Marvin,
Thanks for apprising me of the latest racist-pig outburst by Big Daddy Barbour, recent boss of the RNC.
So, let me get this straight. According to Big Daddy, there is not the slightest scintilla of racism connected to calling someone a tar baby, or referring to their works as tar babies.
Just like calling someone a porch monkey or a bush baby or a sambo has no relation to their race or group.
Okay....
I suppose then, if you call someone a redneck racist cocksucker, you're really only referring to people with red necks who use their mouths to do things to.....well, you know; not Big Daddy Barbour or members of his cross burning clan, of course, cuz that would be rude and sooooo impolite. Pig.
As for Ted and Mike, they are both the product of oozing asshole suppuration, both of them being from the Loose Bowel Syndrome wing of the Republican Party.
Loose bowels, loose talk, loose morals, lost mental capacity.
The Moe-dern GOP.
Look up "Reprehensible Assholes" in the dictionary and you'll see a panoramic picture of the Republican Party.
God almighty! Every fucking day it's some new atrocity with these pigs.
Haley,
I had the same thought about Krugman. On the other hand, maybe the years of being right about things and still having those in power ignore him has taken a toll.....
I do hope he is in good health.