The one thing Martin O’Malley said Saturday night that really stayed with me was his assertion that the symbol of the United States is not the barbed wire fence but the Statue of Liberty. We’re having our principles and values tested and many of our elected leaders are coming up short. This includes my absentee Governor Bobby “the Jingoist” Jindal and the Governor of Texas both who profess to belong to a religion where the guru clearly states this:
“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’…
Matthew 25:42
I am not one to quote folks’ imaginary friends. But, this is ridiculous. You can’t profess that religion and then totally ignore the overwhelming message of its primary teacher which is basically to love one another and help the least among us.
Unlike the self aggrandizing election propaganda pushed by the likes of David “Spy Master and professional John” Vitter and Bobby Jindal (alleged christians), there have not been 10,000 Syrian refuges sent to Louisiana. There have been 14 relocated to the state. Jindal and others want our doors slammed shut to the refugees fleeing an enemy of our own creation.
A day after Gov. Bobby Jindal sent a letter to the White House demanding to hear from President Barack Obama the number of Syrian refugees who have been allowed into Louisiana, the State Department confirmed the number this year was 14.
“As Governor of Louisiana, I demand information about the Syrian refugees being placed in Louisiana in hopes that the night of horror in Paris is not duplicated here,” Jindal wrote in his letter Saturday.
Jindal’s letter came at the end of a day in which multiple blogs reporting that 10,000 Syrian refugees had already made their way to New Orleans went viral. Many of the blogs were published earlier this month but appeared to gain new life following Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.
Seven Syrian refugees have been resettled in Kenner, while six have been placed in New Orleans with one placed in Baton Rouge, a State Department spokesperson said Sunday in response to a request for the numbers from WWL-TV.
The blogs that cited the figure of 10,000 refugees also include an image, purportedly of Syrian men in New Orleans, which actually is a photograph of migrants protesting outside of a train station in Budapest, Hungary, on Sept. 3.
While the Obama administration has announced plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refuges in the United States in 2016, the State Department on Sunday said those people will be spread across the country, not in one area.
“We do not have projections on how many Syrians will be resettled in each state. However, those allocations are made in close collaboration with the nongovernmental organizations that resettle refugees as well as with state and local government officials,” the State Department said in a statement.
Indeed, the State Department already has a rigorous background check and process in place to assure that our country is safe and that we can welcome refugees and folks that want to become part of the United States. Here’s a transcript of a briefing on the process. You can read more to find more about the programs in each of the countries generally impacted by the current refugee crisis.
So we refer to the program as the USRAP, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, so if I use that acronym that’s what that means. So the USRAP is an interagency process that includes three primary U.S. Government agencies. That’s us, the Department of State, as the primary lead agency; the Department of Homeland Security, specifically U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; and the Department of Health and Human Services, their Office of Refugee Resettlement.
So this USRAP involves those three government agencies as well as international organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, a number of nongovernmental organizations – these we normally refer to as resettlement agencies in the United States – as well as U.S. states, cities, private citizens, churches and mosques, and community groups. So it’s a lot of people involved, big process, fairly standard procedures.
So there are a number of processing requirements within the USRAP that cannot be waived, such as an in-person DHS interview, security checks, and a medical exam, including a TB test. And this is one way – one of the many ways in which our Refugee Resettlement Program differs from a lot of other countries’ resettlement programs. A lot of other countries can do things like waive an in-person interview. They can take a case based on dossier. They do very few security checks in some cases. Those are not options that are available to us. So because of these very strict requirements that we have and because at any given time we’re processing cases in 70 or more locations worldwide with a limited amount of resources, it currently takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months or even longer to process a case from referral or application to arrival in the United States.
And I want to focus on that for just a second and repeat that, because it’s an important point. If we had a much smaller case load – let’s say if we processed 5,000 or 10,000 or even 20,000 people a year, and if we only processed in capitals where we have a physical presence, like Amman or Nairobi – processing times would be much shorter. But because we accept referrals from UNHCR for refugees in remote locations and camps all over the world – places like eastern Chad and western Tanzania that are pretty difficult to get to – we can’t send our staff up to interview a case as soon as we have one referral or ten referrals or even a hundred referrals. We’re constantly looking for a critical mass of cases before we go and start processing those cases.
The USRAP is a labor-intensive program. Between the three government agencies, we spent last year a little bit more than $1.1 billion, so it is a labor-intensive and fairly resource-intensive program.
So I’m going to go over the main steps on the overseas processing side first. And the first important step in getting access to the USRAP is either a referral or an application. The vast majority of our referrals come from UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, also known as the UN Refugee Agency. U.S. embassies and certain NGOs are also qualified to refer cases to us, but we get very few from those two sources. About 75 percent of our referrals to the program come from UNHCR. Another 25 percent of the program – so about a quarter of the program – a quarter of our applicants gain access through direct applications. And so some of you are probably familiar with some of these direct application programs.
At least four Republican governors are moving to block Syrian refugees from entering their states after Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 125 people and wounded hundreds more.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Monday joined Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in refusing to accept refugees from Syria. “A Syrian ‘refugee’ appears to have been part of the Paris terror attack,” Abbott wrote in a letter informing President Barack Obama of his plans not to allow Syrian refugees into Texas. “American humanitarian compassion could be exploited to expose Americans to similar deadly danger.”
Abbott argued that neither the president nor any federal official could guarantee the refugees wouldn’t be part of any terrorist activity. “As such, opening our door to them irresponsibly exposes our fellow Americans to unacceptable peril,” he wrote.
Despite Friday’s deadly attacks, the White House has said Obama still plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016.
Hutchinson, Bentley and Snyder have also announced their intentions to halt Syrian refugees from entering their states, with the latter two stating their opposition Sunday.
Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order Monday (Nov. 16) to prevent Syrian refugees from being resettled in Louisiana.
In issuing the order, Jindal referenced last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and injured hundreds more. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Jindal said the introduction of Syrian refugees into the U.S. without “proper prior screening and follow-up monitoring could result in a threat to the citizens and property of this state.”
He cited a section of the Louisiana Constitution that says “during times of emergency… the governor has emergency powers to protect the citizens and property of the state of Louisiana.”
Jindal also sent a letter to the Obama administration on Saturday demanding information about the refugees being placed in Louisiana.
Legally, the states have limited power to control the flow of foreigners into their states; that authority is reserved largely to the federal government under the Constitution.
As the dust settles on the Paris attacks, intelligence agencies are scrambling to gather information on the reported attackers. Passports collected on-scene have helped identify the nationalities of a few of the attackers, most of whom are from the European Union. A Syrian passport has also been found, though authorities have warned it could be fake.
French authorities believe that as many as 20 people were involved in planning the attack, claimed by ISIS (also known as ISIL or the Islamic State). Most of the released information indicates that the attackers were born and raised either in France or Belgium. Omar Ismail Mostefai (1) and Salah Abdeslam (2) — who is still at large — are the two names to be officially released so far. Mostefai, who detonated himself in a suicide attack on Friday, was a French national who grew up south of Paris while Abdeslam was born and lived in Brussels.
Additionally, it shows a shameful lack of understanding of ISIS which is a radical Sunni element that is against ANYONE that’s against its interpretation of Islam. The primary military battles right now are with other ethnic Muslims, notably the Kurdish. ISIS has its own strategy and agenda. It is an apocalyptic cult–much like that of many fundamentalist christian sects in our country–with the goal of establishing a path to the end times and a theocracy based on its interpretation of Muslim theology. It’s at war with every one that’s not ISIS. It has not singled out the west or its culture which is why it also did suicide attacks in Lebanon in close proximity to the Paris attacks. All of the Republican candidates for President are terribly ill-informed when it comes to affairs of state as is their base.
But ISIS isn’t a civilization. In parts of Iraq and Syria, it’s a self-declared, though unrecognized, state. Elsewhere, it’s a network of terrorist groups linked by a common ideology. “Civilizations” are cultural groupings. In calling the Paris attack a “clash of civilizations,” Rubio evoked Samuel Huntington’s famed 1993Foreign Affairs essay of the same name. In that essay, Huntington defined “civilization” as “the broadest level of cultural identity people have.” And he suggested that the world contains “seven or eight” major ones: “Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African.”
The most straightforward way to interpret Rubio’s statement, therefore, is that the civilizational “they” that attacked Paris is Islam. Among the grassroots conservatives Rubio is wooing in his campaign for president, that’s a popular view. After all, recentpolling in states like Iowa and North Carolina suggests that upwards of one-third of Republicans would like to make Islam illegal in the United States.
Ben Carson and Donald Trump have indulged that sentiment crudely. Rubio, typically, is doing so more subtly. But it’s worth noting how fundamentally his analysis diverges from that of both of America’s post-9/11 presidents. George W. Bush said America was at war with an ideology that had “hijacked Islam” in the same way Nazism had hijacked Germany or communism had hijacked Russia. Barack Obama has argued that even this assessment gives violent jihadists a stature they don’t deserve. Rubio, by contrast, is going far beyond Bush. And he’s doing exactly what the Islamic State wants: He’s equating ISIS with Islam itself.
These Republican governors are playing into ISIS’ hand. They want the west to look bad to Muslims all over the world. They want us all characterized as ‘Crusaders’ and not loving humanitarians capable of discerning evil from ordinary people. Europe has its own set of right wing xenophobes which parrot similar tropes.
The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign. Since January, European citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provided online and material support to lethal operations in Paris,Copenhagen and near Lyon, France, as well as attempted attacks in London,Barcelona and near Brussels. Islamic State fighters are likely responsible fordestroying the Russian airliner over the Sinai. These attacks are not random, nor are they aimed primarily at affecting Western policy in the Middle East. They are, rather, part of a militarily capable organization’s campaign to mobilize extremist actors already in Europe and to recruit new ones.
The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks “compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.” The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.
Unfortunately, elements of European society are reacting as the Islamic State desires. Far-right parties have gained strength in many European countries. France’s National Front is expected to dominate local elections in northern France this winter; on Saturday, Marine Le Pen, its leader, declared “those who maintain links with Islamism” to be “France’s enemies.” The Danish People’s Party gained 21 percent of the vote in national elections in June on a nationalist, anti-Islamic platform. The anti-foreigner Sweden Democrats is steadily growing in popularity.
I remember taking American History in Junior High School. We were beginning to delve into World War 2 in a much more nuanced way. Since I eventually became a history major, I was fascinated by all aspects of history including our culpability in genocides and injustice. I was horrified to find out that we turned away many European Jewish immigrants prior to the NAZI take over. That, and our internment of Japanese citizens was my first experience at critically looking at our country’s modern history of White Christian Male privilege. I discovered the genocide of indigenous people and the horrors of slavery earlier but had thought we’d evolved with the Civil Rights Era.
Just as my mind knows the faces of Jewish friends who lost family in Germany, I know Syrians with family dead, dying, and trying to escape the horror there. I condemn strongly the hatred, bigotry, and ignorance of any one playing into the hands of ISIS. This is not the Iron Age. This is not the Dark Ages. American is better than people like David Vitter, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and the likes. Notice that TWO of these folks are the children of immigrants too! What if we had closed our doors on them because they were Catholic? They were dark skinned and from India? How dare they redefine our country?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
H/T to Winter Claire Randall for the Matthew quote and to David Bernstein for the State Department link.
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It’s a beautiful autumn day here in New Orleans. Many of us are voting early to ensure David Vitter’s political career ends this month. There are some interesting dynamics this election cycle. There’s only so much craziness allowed in the Republican Party by the moneyed interested before they start closing down the monkey house that’s become much of the local structure and grass roots. The base and the establishment couldn’t be more at odds. There is real concern that the Trump flame isn’t burning out. Last cycle, they were able to bring the insipid Mitt Romney through the process only to lose big time to the President. They also managed to hoist Dubya Bush on us at a cost of blood and treasure. Nixon really burned the house down. The Southern Strategy has really come back to haunt them.
There are some interesting articles up today analyzing various topics. The first is from WAPO and deals with establishment panic over Donald Trump.
Less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them.
Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands.
The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.
In normal times, the way forward would be obvious. The wannabes would launch concerted campaigns, including television attack ads, against the front-runners. But even if the other candidates had a sense of what might work this year, it is unclear whether it would ultimately accrue to their benefit. Trump’s counterpunches have been withering, while Carson’s appeal to the base is spiritual, not merely political. If someone was able to do significant damage to them, there’s no telling to whom their supporters would turn, if anyone.
Those attacks included Trump doubling down on his comparison of what he has called Carson’s incurable “pathological temper” to child molesters, while at the same time questioning Carson’s account of his violent childhood incidents. This all occurred during a 95-minute speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Trump asked his supporters of Carson’s stories.
Trump characterized Carson’s lying as “pathological and akin to child molester’s who can’t be cured. Can you believe this is the level of discourse we’ve come to? Can any of them even talk about a policy that’s remotely good and realistic for the country?
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.
By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years. “The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption. In this time period of June and July, the threat continues to rise. Terrorists were disappearing [as if in hiding, in preparation for an attack]. Camps were closing. Threat reportings on the rise.” The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.
But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly in such detail until now—or been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, my partners Jules and Gedeon Naudet and I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.
The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—“getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” “And the word back,” says Tenet, “‘was ‘we’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.’” (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they’d been warned.) Black, a charismatic ex-operative who had helped the French arrest the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, says the Bush team just didn’t get the new threat: “I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties—they drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this.”
That morning of July 10, the head of the agency’s Al Qaeda unit, Richard Blee, burst into Black’s office. “And he says, ‘Chief, this is it. Roof’s fallen in,’” recounts Black. “The information that we had compiled was absolutely compelling. It was multiple-sourced. And it was sort of the last straw.” Black and his deputy rushed to the director’s office to brief Tenet. All agreed an urgent meeting at the White House was needed. Tenet picked up the white phone to Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. “I said, ‘Condi, I have to come see you,’” Tenet remembers. “It was one of the rare times in my seven years as director where I said, ‘I have to come see you. We’re comin’ right now. We have to get there.’”
Tenet vividly recalls the White House meeting with Rice and her team. (George W. Bush was on a trip to Boston.) “Rich [Blee] started by saying, ‘There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al Qaeda’s intention is the destruction of the United States.’” [Condi said:] ‘What do you think we need to do?’ Black responded by slamming his fist on the table, and saying, ‘We need to go on a wartime footing now!’”
“What happened?” I ask Cofer Black. “Yeah. What did happen?” he replies. “To me it remains incomprehensible still. I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone.” Remarkably, in her memoir, Condi Rice writes of the July 10 warnings: “My recollection of the meeting is not very crisp because we were discussing the threat every day.” Having raised threat levels for U.S. personnel overseas, she adds: “I thought we were doing what needed to be done.” (When I asked whether she had any further response to the comments that Tenet, Black and others made to me, her chief of staff said she stands by the account in her memoir.) Inexplicably, although Tenet brought up this meeting in his closed-door testimony before the 9/11 Commission, it was never mentioned in the committee’s final report.
And there was one more chilling warning to come. At the end of July, Tenet and his deputies gathered in the director’s conference room at CIA headquarters. “We were just thinking about all of this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur,” he recalls. “And I’ll never forget this until the day I die. Rich Blee looked at everybody and said, ‘They’re coming here.’ And the silence that followed was deafening. You could feel the oxygen come out of the room. ‘They’re coming here.’”
It’s amazing to me that major failures of policy by Republican administrations never seem to matter to any one as long as the money keeps funneling its way up to the rich and they can keep their base stupid and angry. The deal is that I truly believe that behavior is backfiring on them finally during this election cycle. It’s bad enough that we suffered through the Reagan years and they were characterized quite differently and that so many people believe the hype and not the reality apparent in the facts. My hope is that entangling the neocon policy will bring about a higher realization since so many Americans died as a result. However, look at the Republican Field. We have folks that are either totally clueless on the entire foreign area. For example, Ben Carson actually stated in the last debate that China was active in the Middle East which is not the least bit true. The other side is Jeb and the like who come with the same advisers as Dubya. How can any of this be representative of one of the two parties seeking leadership of the world’s only superpower?
The Blog “The Progressive Professor” discusses how we’ve gone from a place where the Republicans were perceived as the party most knowledgeable and able when it comes to foreign policy to the party that is completely clueless and inept. This should be worrisome to both the American Electorate and the world.
It used to be that the Republican Party had candidates who had a reputation for foreign policy expertise, including Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush.
Now, we have Rand Paul, representing the isolationist viewpoint; and the viewpoint of the neoconservatives, which includes just about everyone else, all who have apparently learned nothing from the disastrous policies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They want to commit US military forces to another war, but of course give not a care to veterans once they come home from war, often wounded physically and mentally by their experience.
And some have not a clue as to what is going on in foreign policy, demonstrating unbelievable ignorance, particularly Dr. Benjamin Carson and Donald Trump.
As this blogger has stated many times in the past few years, in the 2012 election cycle, ONLY Jon Huntsman had any legitimate background in foreign policy; and in the 2016 election cycle, only John Kasich demonstrates any experience in foreign policy, although inferior to that of Huntsman.
One may criticize Barack Obama in some areas of foreign policy, but his top aides and advisers on this have included Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and present Secretary of State John Kerry. Many would criticize all of them, but in comparison to the Republican camp, they are people of experience and awareness of the complex world we live in!
• Iran was on Thursday night moving up its ground forces in Syria in preparation for an attack to reclaim rebel-held territory under the cover of Russian air strikes, according to sources close to Damascus. Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia which has come to the Assad regime’s rescue in battle-fronts across the country in the past two years, is being prepared to capitalise on the strikes, a Syrian figure close to the regime told The Telegraph
• Sources in Lebanon told Reuters that Iran, which is the main sponsor and tactical adviser to Hizbollah, was sending in hundreds of its own troops to reinforce them. Iran made no comment on the claims but Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said the move would be an “apt and powerful illustration” that Russia’s military actions had worsened the conflict.
• The long-term aim would be to defeat or demoralise the non-Isil opposition, so that Isil became the regime’s only enemy. That would force the West to back President Bashar al-Assad against it. “They want to clean the country of non-Isil rebels, and then the US will work with them as Isil will be the only enemy,” the Damascus source said.
But the most amusing category belongs to politicians who defend bogus claims by citing secret evidence that only they have access to. As Rachel noted on the show last night, this comes up more often than it should.
Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-Calif.), for example, claimed last year to have secret information about ISIS fighters getting caught entering the United States through Mexico, which never happened in reality. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) claimed to have secret evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which is the exact opposite of the truth.
And then there’s Ben Carson, who claimed this week that China has deployed troops to Syria, despite the fact that China has not deployed troops to Syria. Yesterday, Armstrong Williams, a top Carson campaign aide, defended the claim by pointing to – you guessed it – secret intelligence. Here was the exchange between Williams and MSNBC’s Tamron Hall:
WILLIAMS: Well, Tamron, from your perspective and what most people know, maybe that is inaccurate, but from my intelligence and what Dr. Carson`s been told by people on the ground involved in that area of the world, it has been told to him many times over and over that the Chinese are there. But as far as our intelligence and the briefings that Dr. Carson`s been in, and I`ve certainly been in with him, he`s certainly been told that the Chinese are there.
Last month, the retired right-wing neurosurgeon claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas all went to college together. When told that didn’t make any sense, Carson insisted he’s talked to “various people” who’ve provided him with unique insights.
You can follow the link to a snippet from Maddow’s show that discusses some absolute bizarre comments from Carson. This includes a really bizarre CBN interview about ties between those three leaders as some kind of dormmates at the same university and that he has secret sources.
So, the question being discussed across coffee at my house is who the hell is supporting these guys and wtf is wrong with them? I’m no psychologist, but what causes a person to go gaga over a pathological liar and a malignant narcissist to the point of thinking they should be president? Why do so many Republicans want Ben Carson in office? (I need to add that this discussion is held between two former Republicans. My friend is a very recent addition to my reformed republican club which I formed 20 years ago having decided that the absolute craziness over gay marriage and adoption was the most bigoted and hateful thing she’d ever seen.)
Here’s some analysis of a poll done by ABC.
Respondents saw Carson’s lack of experience in politics as a strength, not a weakness. Like other Carson supporters we interviewed, Karen Mihalic, 61, loves that the neurosurgeon’s “not like your typical politician.”
“I don’t think politicians are really in tune with the rest of America and what we need,” Mihalic said. “We need someone to shake things up down there.”
Don, 30, who declined to give his last name, said he doesn’t see a difference between Carson’s experience in politics and that of President Obama.
Jeanne Blando, 71, agreed.
“I think Carson will be much more effective than the president we have now,” Blando said.
Carson’s values are important.
But why not support fellow outsider Donald Trump instead? For Blando, it’s all about Carson’s values.
“I love Trump because he says what he thinks, but that won’t work for governing,” Blando said.
Jesse Varoz, 28, called Carson an “upstanding guy.” Richard Medina, 69, said Carson was “truly honest and someone I can depend on.”
“If you listen to [Carson] speak, he thinks about what he’s gonna say, while other candidates do not,” Medina said.
Ignorance is not only bliss, it’s evidently a very attractive and powerful opiate of a good portion of the masses.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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It appears I’m back on line after five days of utility hell! Katrina taught me how to camp out efficiently in my own home and endlessly harass “service” providers. However, it’s a skill I’d rather never use again. The last hurricane was bad enough. This 1 day outage of electricity and 5 day outage of tv/internet was made worse by me having to stick around the house waiting, calling, and watching. I watched the forum last night and Z Nation on my old college TV which finally brought me back in to the world at large. The new TV in the front took a hit from the power surge so all is not completely well. I’m still waiting for the carpenter to fix the faschia board on the gable. So, let me see what’s going on in the world before I try to go back and catch up with lost work.
I’ve noticed that one thing about living in the information age with plenty of ways to chase down information and plenty of ways to document and spread information, we’ve got a lot of opportunities to catch up with big fat liars and their lies. Most of the public seems to not avail itself of the tools necessary to fact check. Indeed, they appear to chase straight for the sites and people that peddle lies. But, we’re seeing an entirely new reality when the actual reality burbles its way through the web and media.
No where is this more noticeable than when officer’s invent stories that are not backed up by the material evidence collected at the scene. Thank goodness for police body cams and dash cams! We’re beginning to see more and more examples of police using unnecessary deadly force and then being caught creating absolute lies to cover up their actions. There are two recent examples worth noting. The first comes from N.J. where a dash cam shows that a suspect did, indeed, have his hands up which conflicts with officer accounts.
Two police officers who accused a motorist of trying to grab one of their guns were convicted Thursday of misconduct in part because a dashcam video showed the motorist holding his hands up.
Bloomfield Officers Sean Courter and Orlando Trinidad were found guilty by an Essex County jury of conspiracy, official misconduct, tampering with and falsifying public records and lying to authorities. Courter, 35, and Trinidad, 34, face mandatory minimum prison sentences of five years when they’re sentenced in January.
Courter, of Englishtown, and Trinidad, of Bloomfield, initially said motorist Marcus Jeter tried to grab Courter’s gun and struck Trinidad during a traffic stop on the Garden State Parkway in 2012. Jeter was charged with resisting arrest, aggravated assault and other offenses based on video from one of the officers’ dashboard cameras.
But Jeter acquired a second police dashcam video through an open records request. Combined, the videos showed him with his hands in the air for virtually the entire encounter.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Jeter and charged Trinidad, Courter and a third officer.
“They accused Mr. Jeter of criminal acts that led to him being charged and indicted,” assistant prosecutor Berta Rodriguez, who tried the case, said Thursday. “He was facing five years in prison. But for the dash camera in the second police vehicle, he might be in prison today.”
The third officer, Albert Sutterlin, pleaded guilty in 2013 to falsifying and tampering with records.
This next example had a tragic result. A six year old boy was killed as city marshals in a small Louisiana Town near Texas used deadly force on his unarmed father. The two were seated in a car. Two city marshals now face second degree murder charges.
Two city marshals in the central Louisiana town of Marksville will be charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of a six-year-old autistic boyfollowing a car chase involving his father, authorities announced late Friday.
Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, a reserve officer, and Lt. Derrick Stafford, 32, were arrested Friday night by the Louisiana State Police, which is leading the investigation, CBS affiliate WAFB reported.
Jeremy Mardis was shot and killed Tuesday after his father, Christopher Few, led law enforcement officers on a chase. Few was wounded in the incident and is hospitalized in critical condition.
The marshals will also be charged with attempted second-degree murder of the father, Louisiana State Police Col. Michael Edmonson said at a news conference late Friday night.
Lt. Jason Brouillette and Sgt. Kenneth Purnell were also involved in the chase but have not been charged. All four officers were placed on administrative leave.
One of the officers was wearing a body camera which recorded the chase, the shooting and its aftermath.
“It is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen, and I’ll leave it at that,” Edmonson said, adding that the footage, witness interviews and forensic evidence led police to file charges.
According to the Marksville Police Department, Few led the law enforcement officers on a short pursuit Tuesday night and stopped on a dead-end road.
“The initial statement to my investigators was that the vehicle was backing up, they feared for their lives and they started firing,” Edmonson told CBS News correspondent David Begnaud Friday morning.
“There were a lot of shots fired that night and they were coming in one direction. There’s nothing for us that indicates that any fire came from that SUV,” Edmonson said. “There was no weapon found in that SUV.”
You can read more about this case on the NYT. We are clearly doing many things wrong in our criminal justice system. I hate to disturb you on a weekend morning, but reading about this small victim and his unnecessary death is vital to realizing we need reform and we need it now.
BB wrote quite a bit about the fanciful tales spun by Republican candidate Ben Carson yesterday. More and more media outlets are finding and checking out his tall tales. The WSJ has found more examples of completely untrue anecdotes that show up in Carson’s book and speeches. Carson’s poll numbers have started to fall. WTF is wrong with Republicans that they blindly accept all of their jerks at face value? Are they completely incapable of critical thinking and fact checking? Brian Beutler discusses this in an article in the Republic.
Ben Carson’s popularity among conservatives has been marked by their imperviousness to questions about his honesty and fitness. Carson has made dozens of statements about federal policy that have transcended garden-variety conservative over-promising and reached the realm of Chauncey Gardner-esque absurdity. He has also faced serious questions about the veracity of stories he tells about his youth and young manhood. Through it all, conservatives have not only stuck by his side, but actually become more taken with him. They’ve brushed off scrutiny with glib mockery, accusing white liberals of “othering” a black man for having the temerity to leave the “thought plantation.”
That all likely changes now that Carson has confessed to fabricating a seminal story about having declined admission to West Point in his youth. When you’ve lost Breitbart, it stands to reason that you will also lose talk-radio fawning, viral email forwards, and all the other mysterious sources of conservative cult status.
But there is room for genuine doubt here: Could Carson’s supporters prove so uninterested in his genuine merits and demerits that they might look past this transgression? The very fact that this doubt exists incriminates both the conservative-entertainment complex and the nature of the Republican electorate.
I always cringe at the representation of these Republicans as “conservative” because they are anything but conservative. Many tend to be outright theocratic and most really support insurgency and radical change. There’s nothing conservative about the stories they invent to justify insurrection. Kevin Drum at Mojo has made a short list of some of his most egregious fabrications.
Because we have synchronous and widespread sources of news, it’s really difficult for politicians to get away with these tall tells. Carson gave an absolutely unhinged presser yesterday where he tried to blame the media for all these misunderstandings. Blaming the “liberal” media has been staple of Republican pols since Nixon. The entire last Republican debate was an exercise in blaming the media for gotcha questions when mostly what was happen was good old fashion fact checking and holding to account.
Again, we have an excellent example of this in Louisiana in the David Vitter race. Vitter ran an absolutely blistering set of ads against his two Republican opponents in the election. They were so bad, that our Republican LT. Governor has now endorsed the Blue Dog Democrat who faces Vitter in the run-off. Many of the the supporters of the other Republican who came in a very close third have also put their support behind John Bel Edwards. Now, the Republican party is coming after LT. Governor Jay Dardenne with machetes and stating that JBE latest ad has brought the race to a new low. Oh, really? Where were you a few weeks ago when Vitter was attacking fellow Republicans? Lies can be told but it takes very little effort these days to unearth the truth.
On the evening of Monday, Feb. 25, 1991, only five hours before Baghdad Radio would tell Iraqi troops to begin withdrawing from Kuwait, all hell rained down on a U.S. Army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It was, as the New York Times described it the next day, “the most devastating Iraqi stroke of the Persian Gulf war.” An Iraqi Scud missile struck the barracks, killing 28 Americans and wounding 100 more.
The barracks had been home to the 475th Quartermaster Group, an Army Reserve unit from the small western Pennsylvania town of Farrell.
Reading the grisly details of that night’s events still evokes horror and grief. Here is how New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, Jr., described the aftermath in his Feb. 26, 1991, story, “This morning, under the pitiless glare of portable floodlights, excavating equipment began plowing through the blackened remains of the building. Servicemen joined in the search for the missing, using picks and shovels, as some of the survivors milled about. Many wept.”
Fast-forward ten years to February 27, 2001: On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives members were preparing to host President George W. Bush, who would deliver his State of the Union address that evening.
Before hearing from Bush, however, the House had some business to conclude – considering a resolution “honoring the ultimate sacrifice” made by those killed and wounded that horrible day 10 years earlier. When the votes were tallied at 5:27 p.m., the resolution passed overwhelmingly, 395-0.
Thirty-five members, however, did not vote that afternoon. Among them was U.S. Rep. David Vitter, a Republican from suburban New Orleans serving his second term.
Vitter may have missed this vote because he waiting on a return call from an escort service based in California that sold the services of women in the Washington, D.C., area. As his colleagues and constituents would later learn, Vitter was a regular customer of the escort service.
Saying “David Vitter’s governorship will further” damage a Republican brand “damaged by the failed leadership of Bobby Jindal during this last term,” Dardenne threw his support behind Edwards at an event on the LSU campus.
Fine, be angry or disappointed with Dardenne, who has faithfully carried the Republican banner since childhood when he handed out push cards for Barry Goldwater, for his decision to break a promise not to endorse in the runoff. It is also OK to criticize the Republican for endorsing a Democrat even though this particular Republican has a long history of being a) independent and b) shunned by the very party officials who now brand him a traitor.
But to rank Dardenne on the hate meter with Satan, Alabama football coach Nick Saban, “the socialist” Barack Obama or a jilted husband taking violent revenge on his ex-wife goes well beyond the pale — even in this day of nasty, hyperbolic political discourse.
The worst, by far, is the despicable letter fired off by Peter Egan, chairman of the St. Tammany Republican Parish Executive Committee. In the unique worldview of Egan, Dardenne endorsing a Democrat — rather than toe the party line and endorse Vitter, or at least stay silent — is “a vehement act of retribution” for being knocked out of the race in the open primary.
Mr. Egan goes on pontificating, declaring “the behavior of endorsing Edwards is akin to that of a jilted man firing indiscriminately at his ex-wife’s car, mindless of the collateral harm and injury to many innocent people.”
I’m all for hyperbole to make a point, but exactly who are these innocent people Dardenne has harmed?
No individual who answers the call of public service deserves hate-speech like this, and especially a man who has done an impeccable job of serving the state he loves.
Where were all these “Republican or die” people when Vitter, a fellow Republican, was assailing Dardenne’s character and GOP service to Louisiana? Is the message that vicious Republican-on-Republican attacks — whether they come from Vitter or Egan — are fair game, but endorsing a man who did not eviscerate your character is a crime punishable by political death?
FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly has a heated argument with network contributor George Will over his latest columnwhich accuses the O’Reilly Factor host of slandering former President Ronald Reagan in his latest book,Killing Reagan.
“It is not a laudatory book,” Will said about O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan. “It is doing the work of the left which knows in order to discredit conservatism it must destroy Reagan’s reputation as president. Your book does the work of the American left with its extreme recklessness.”
“You’re a hack,” O’Reilly said to Will. “You are in with the cabal of the Reagan loyalists who don’t want the truth to be told.”
Conservative columnist George Will attacked Bill O’Reilly’s new book, “Killing Reagan, in the Washington Post on Thursday — calling it “a tissue of unsubstantiated assertions” that “will distort public understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could” — and to the surprise of absolutely no one, O’Reilly shot back last night.
Will’s criticism was admittedly harsh. He warned readers of O’Reilly’s book to beware, as they were “about to enter a no-facts zone,” and referred to the book as “nonsensical history and execrable citizenship,” so it’s not as O’Reilly wasn’t within his rights to be offended.
And offended he was. He began by noting the difference between “slander” and “libel,” which Will misused in his column — because, of course, noting one error in an otherwise sound review of a book invalidates all of the other valid criticisms contained therein.
You should go watch the video if you can stomach it.
So, the deal is that we can in fact ferret out the truth in many many ways these days and we can rely on some media sources and fact checkers to do so. The deal is this. The lie tends to resonant louder than then the correction. It’s usually buried deep and less accessible.
What’s a voter to do?
So, that’s it for me today. What’s on your reading and blogging list?
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MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is set to moderate the network’s only event in the Presidential primary season, a forum from Winthrop University in South Carolina. Deemed the “First in the South Presidential Forum”, tonight’s event will feature frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
The event in Rock Hill, SC is scheduled to air from 8-10 p.m. EST on MSNBC. Although the event is primarily sponsored by the South Carolina Democratic Party, the event is also being co-sponsored by twelve other southern states.
Maddow was careful to make the distinction that tonight’s event is a “forum” and not a formal DNC-sanctioned “debate”. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has continued to be under fire for limiting the official number of debates to only six.
The debate is being held in Rock Hill, South Carolina. There are many questions that loom. Will Bernie go negative? Will any one notice Martin O’Malley? Another question Alex-Seid Waltz wants to know is can Hillary maintain her monopoly on the black vote?
Clinton is likely to use the forum to focus on reaching out to people of color, who make up the majority of South Carolina’s Democratic primary electorate. In an op-ed published in Ebony magazine Friday morning, Clinton called for “a new and comprehensive commitment to equity and opportunity for communities of color,” that includes better investment in under-served communities.
The former secretary of state has a huge advantage among nonwhite voters over Sanders, capturing support from 8 out of 10 black voters in the Palmetto State. She lost the state handily to Barack Obama in 2008 in a bitter and racially charged primary.
Rep. James Clyburn, the most powerful Democrat in the state, said that’s been forgiven. “I have talked to a lot of people and they are not holding any of that against Hillary today,” he told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki.
But Sanders will have a big chance to introduce himself for the first time to South Carolina black Democrats for the first time Friday night, and he’ll roll out a campaign leadership team in the state that includes Black Lives Matter activists and others.
Join us to watch the forum and get answers to these and more questions!!
The event from Rock Hill, SC will air live on MSNBC at 8 p.m. For viewers who are eager to watch the forum through their computers, the option to use the MSNBC TV app is available as well. The app is a free download from NBC News Digital. Additionally, a cable or satellite subscription with an active log-in account can access the content through http://www.msnbc.com/now as it airs.
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And there are real life monsters and they seem to be running for office as Republicans! I want to spend some time on Louisiana Senator David Vitter who is competing for the title of slimiest person on the planet. His campaign is a case study in making an appeal to the worst in humanity. Of course, he wants to keep the spolight off himself. He is doing everything to make blue dog Democrat John Bel Edwards look like the President’s long lost twin brother and using the most hateful racist memes in a TV ad that appears to be on endless rotation.
David Vitter is running an ad straight out of the Willie Horton School of scare all the stupid white people. Yesterday, the NAACP called him on all his race baiting and he’s responded with a shrug. Only a monster could use these kinds of racist dogwhistles to win. He won’t be taking the ad down. He obviously thinks the best strategy is to just pound away on the racists and hope there’s enough of them to vote him into office.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter said he is not taking down an ad that use the word “thugs” after the New Orleans NAACP demanded the gubernatorial candidate stop running the spot, which it called “demeaning and racial.”
The ad accuses his Democratic opponent, John Bel Edwards, of promising to release 5,500 “dangerous thugs” into communities across Louisiana. It also ties Edwards to President Barack Obama, who has pushed the federal government to reduce sentences for non-violent offenders, and commuted or pardoned some of those offenders.
Vitter’s campaign released the following statement:
Senator Vitter told the NAACP that he’s not about to take down his ad. As he explained: “Edwards’ and Obama’s almost identical proposals to release 5,500-6,000 criminals from prisons is dangerous and irresponsible. They’d release dangerous thugs as defined by Merriam-Webster who’d threaten ALL of our neighborhoods.”
Professionals like those at the Louisiana District Attorneys Association agree. As they explained clearly recently in writing: “The myth that a significant percentage of currently incarcerated inmates are harmless and unnecessarily confined is simply not accurate.”
Morris Reed, the president of the NAACP, said he’s disappointed in Vitter’s decision.
“I have to believe that at least 5,000 (of the 50,000 people in prison) are nonviolent offenders,” Reed said. “A large percentage of our inmates are in need of mental health treatment they’re not receiving while incarcerated. So it would behoove Louisiana citizens to urge their leaders to be more innovative than locking people up and throwing away the key.”
The Edwards campaign has sought to clarify his remarks about removing offenders from prison, saying he would reduce the prison population using a variety of methods such as pre-trial diversionary programs that would keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.
Vitter is desperate. Polls in the state are showing him losing the race. Louisiana moved from being a purple state to joining the solid red South after Katrina. As you know, I seriously believe that Rove purposefully kept a good deal of Black New Orleans from returning to ensure the state would switch. So, this definitely shows a crack in the plan.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) trails Democratic gubernatorial rival John Bel Edwards by 12 points after edging out his Republican challengers in Saturday’s jungle primary, according to a Democratic poll made public Thursday.
The survey conducted by Democratic polling firm Anzalone Liszt Grove on behalf of the anti-Vitter Gumbo PAC found Edwards, a state representative, leading the senator 52 percent to 40 percent. The runoff is Nov. 21.
Notably, the poll found that voters who cast their ballots for losing Republican candidates Scott Angelle and Lt. Gov Jay Dardenne are now just as likely to choose Edwards as they are to choose Vitter. Forty-seven percent of those Republican voters said they’d be likely to move toward Edwards while 46 percent said they’d be likely to move toward Vitter.
Those Republican voters also have a more favorable view of Edwards than they do of Vitter. Forty-seven percent of Angelle and Dardenne supporters said they viewed Edwards favorably compared to forty percent who said they viewed Vitter favorably.
The poll surveyed 700 likely runoff voters by phone from Oct. 26-28. The survey had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s misleading and malicious political ads targeting state Rep. John Bel Edwards, his Democratic opponent for governor, are reminiscent of another sad chapter in American history. A U.S. senator was involved in that one, too. More on that later.A Vitter television spot says electing Edwards would be like making President Obama Louisiana’s next governor, which is about as far-fetched as the devious mind can fathom. However, the worst part of the spot is the accusation that Edwards wants to release “5,500 dangerous thugs (and) drug dealers back into our neighborhoods,” which is also a figment of the Vitter campaign’s creative imagination.
Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, told The Times-Picayune the ad appears aimed at stoking fears among white voters that Edwards will unleash dangerous black criminals into safe neighborhoods.
Robert Mann, Manship chair of journalism at LSU, in a story for salon.com, said, “Vitter’s objective is, quite simply, to smear Edwards by reviving and exploiting Louisiana’s fearful, racist past.”
Edwards said, “I have never supported reducing our incarceration rate by releasing criminals from jail, as the smear ad suggests. Rather, my statement about inmates in the speech referenced was about reducing the prison population through long-term solutions without harming public safety.”
“… The (Louisiana) Sheriffs’ Association, which enthusiastically endorsed me yesterday, has no issue with this plan,” Edwards said.
Vitter has a consistent history of campaigning against other public figures rather than telling voters what he wants to do for them. The Advocate of Baton Rouge traced that trend back to another Edwards when Vitter ran for the state Legislature.
“If history is a guide, expect Vitter in particular to be a barroom brawler,” the newspaper said. “In each of his races, he has run against something — former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards and the state Democratic Party when he won elections to the state House in the 1990s; the past and the status quo when he defeated former Republican Gov. David Treen in a special congressional election in 1999; and Washington and national Democrats in his two Senate victories.”
The Treen attacks by Vitter were especially hurtful for one of the most respected and decent men ever to hold public office in Louisiana. John Treen, Dave Treen’s brother, never forgave Vitter, The Advocate said. John Treen said his brother never fully recovered emotionally from the defeat.
John Treen said, “To distort my brother’s record, I thought, was despicable. The idea that someone made a deal (not to attack one another) and broke his word got to him.”
Democrat Charlie Melancon, who lost the 2010 U.S. Senate race to Vitter, was also linked to Obama. He told the newspaper Vitter would “paint a less than truthful picture” of Rep. Edwards.
Most voters who say they can’t vote for Edwards say it’s because he’s too liberal. He is definitely not a hard-core conservative, but he lives by conservative values. Edwards’ most effective TV spot sums up the Vitter strategy well.
“… For the next few weeks, David Vitter will spend millions of dollars lying about my record, my values and my service to our country and our state,” Edwards says. “He’s desperate. All he offers is deception and hypocrisy. I won’t sell my soul to win an election. I live by the West Point honor code. I will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. David Vitter wouldn’t last a day at West Point. It’s time Louisiana demands a little integrity.”
Rand Paul is under increasing pressure from Republicans here and in Washington to pull the plug on his stagnant presidential campaign and instead recommit his resources to keeping his Senate seat in GOP hands.
D.C. Republicans think Paul’s poll numbers have flat-lined — and operatives worried about retaining control of the Senate are ready for him to start spending a lot more time in Kentucky and a lot less time in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“This presidential dream needs to come to an end,” said a national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to discuss Paul’s situation candidly. “Senate Republicans can’t afford to have a competitive race in Kentucky.”
Paul, however, is showing little sign of giving up. Even with poll numbers so low that he might not appear on the main stage for the third GOP debate and his fundraising slowing to a crawl, Paul has a message for those who say it’s time to suspend his run for the White House and focus on his Senate reelection: I can handle both.
Is it possible that we’re beginning to see the infamous US political pendulum swing? Are voters finally realizing what the Republicans are offering? The party seems obsessed with defunding Planned Parenthood, continually attacking marriage equality, and attacking racial minorities. Has it got to a critical mass yet? There’s a movement to make Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio look like a younger, more diversified and tolerant face of the party. If you want a sample of that, read David Brooks. If you’d prefer not to do that, read the critique by Paul Krugman .There’s is nothing new under the sun with either of these two including their assaults on women’s rights and middle class prosperity. Their policy proposals send money to the one percent and defund the nation’s safety nets and benefits for the elderly.
Although the Tea Party may be winding down, it’s pretty clear from the Presidential debates and campaign’s like Vitter’s that the hatred of all things not connected to White, Straight, Rich, Christian Male privilege drives them. Let’s hope the electorate is waking up.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
It’s a Monday and it feels like it!!!
This is especially shameful because we’ve found out that the passport of a supposed Syrian refugee involved in the Paris Massacre was in fact, a false flag operation. It was a falsified document. The people who staged the Paris attacks are primarily native French and Belgians. They were not Syrian refugees.
It’s a beautiful autumn day here in New Orleans. Many of us are voting early to ensure David Vitter’s political career ends this month. There are some interesting dynamics this election cycle. There’s only so much craziness allowed in the Republican Party by the moneyed interested before they start closing down the monkey house that’s become much of the local structure and grass roots. The base and the establishment couldn’t be more at odds. There is real concern that the Trump flame isn’t burning out. Last cycle, they were able to bring the insipid Mitt Romney through the process only to lose big time to the President. They also managed to hoist Dubya Bush on us at a cost of blood and treasure. Nixon really burned the house down. The Southern Strategy has really come back to haunt them.
even attractive as human beings let alone potential presidents?
It’s amazing to me that major failures of policy by Republican administrations never seem to matter to any one as long as the money keeps funneling its way up to the rich and they can keep their base stupid and angry. The deal is that I truly believe that behavior is backfiring on them finally during this election cycle. It’s bad enough that we suffered through the Reagan years and they were characterized quite differently and that so many people believe the hype and not the reality apparent in the facts. My hope is that entangling the neocon policy will bring about a higher realization since so many Americans died as a result. However, look at the Republican Field. We have folks that are either totally clueless on the entire foreign area. For example, Ben Carson actually stated in the last debate that China was active in the Middle East which is not the least bit true. The other side is Jeb and the like who come with the same advisers as Dubya. How can any of this be representative of one of the two parties seeking leadership of the world’s only superpower?
clearly illustrates that the Russians are not on our side no matter how much The Donald and The Carly want to brag about their green room romps with Putin.
You can follow the link to a snippet from Maddow’s show that discusses some absolute bizarre comments from Carson. This includes a really bizarre CBN interview about ties between those three leaders as some kind of dormmates at the same university and that he has secret sources.
It appears I’m back on line after five days of utility hell! Katrina taught me how to camp out efficiently in my own home and endlessly harass “service” providers. However, it’s a skill I’d rather never use again. The last hurricane was bad enough. This 1 day outage of electricity and 5 day outage of tv/internet was made worse by me having to stick around the house waiting, calling, and watching. I watched the forum last night and Z Nation on my old college TV which finally brought me back in to the world at large. The new TV in the front took a hit from the power surge so all is not completely well. I’m still waiting for the carpenter to fix the faschia board on the gable. So, let me see what’s going on in the world before I try to go back and catch up with lost work.
This next example had a tragic result. A six year old boy was killed as city marshals in a small Louisiana Town near Texas used deadly force on his unarmed father. The two were seated in a car. Two city marshals now face second degree murder charges. 
completely untrue anecdotes that show up in Carson’s book and speeches. Carson’s poll numbers have started to fall. WTF is wrong with Republicans that they blindly accept all of their jerks at face value? Are they completely incapable of critical thinking and fact checking? Brian Beutler discusses this in an article in the Republic. 
The JBE ad is a must see. Bobb Mann writes about it for Salon,
Good Evening!
It’s the night before Halloween!! 
I’m not one to quote a conservative pundit without just cause. So many of them are not concerned with anything reasonable and just spout unsupportable memes. But, I’m going to quote from the Lake Charles American Press and Jim Beam, its conservative op ed writer of many years. 
on not losing his seat in the US Senate next year. Republicans are worried they could lose control of the majority.
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