So, who is really Scapegoating Hillary??

Posted: October 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Foreign Affairs, Libya | Tags: , , , | 82 Comments

I’ve been pretty chagrined at blog and media responses to some  Daily Mail Gossip article suggesting that there was some kind of finger-pointing binge between SOS Clinton and POTUS on the Benghazi tragedy. It features the side show of a cat fight between UN ambassador Rice and Secretary Clinton just for that added dash of NeoCon porn fantasies.  It also smacks of right wing tropes and sexism.  Already, we discovered the WSJ sat on an interview–later to be ‘scooped’ by CNN–where Hillary clearly stated she was taking full responsibility for any lax in security and for any mistakes in conveying information made by the State Department.  So much for that right wing vision of Clinton as victimized and disgruntled!  Ever the team player, Clinton had already fallen on the sword when the WSJ let the tropes be flung. Last night, the President took responsibility saying that as Commander in Chief he was ultimately responsible.  Does this sound like the behavior of two people trying to shift blame to each other or bristling at the other’s attempts to shrug responsibility?

We didn’t write about the Daily Mail article here because it smacked of speculation and right wing wishful thinking. Today, Salon‘s Joan Walsh writes “How Hillary Clinton Is Sending the GOP to New Heights of Psycho-Sexual Rage“. Her thesis is this that “right wingers can’t appraise our first black president and his female former rival in anything other than the most degrading gender stereotypes”. I agree.  Just as the right wingers were gleefully shouting that Obama and Rice were throwing Hillary under the bus and that Hillary was not going to stand for it, Clinton had given that WSJ that interview that they sat on that would’ve basically put that entire canard to rest.  So much for the complete Foxification of the WSJ.  It’s no longer just the editorial page that can’t be trusted.  I’m also glad to see Walsh take on Jennifer Rubin who should be swiftly fired from WAPO for perverse tweets that are essentially slut slamming.

It turns out Clinton had already told the Wall Street Journal that she took responsibility for the security problems exposed in the attack almost a week ago – but the paper declined to share that information with the world, saving it instead for a forthcoming profile. Proving that was terrible news judgment, if not a deliberate effort to withhold information that might undermine the right-wing story line that Obama and Joe Biden were scapegoating Clinton, the WSJ published the remarks last night, after CNN’s interview ran.

“I take responsibility,” Clinton told the Journal’s Monica Langley. “I’m the Secretary of State with 60,000-plus employees around the world. This is like a big family … It’s painful, absolutely painful.”

As clear as Clinton’s statements were,  the right immediately used them to bash Obama . Fox’s Steve Doocy claimed Clinton was “falling on her sword for the administration,” while Laura Ingraham insisted she jumped “on the grenade the day before the debate.” CNN contributor Erick Erickson wrote on his RedState blog: “Doesn’t the buck stop with Barack Obama?”

But the award for most unhinged reaction goes to  the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin , who took to Twitter to unleash a psycho-sexual tirade against Clinton, Obama and even the former President Clinton. “First Bill humiliates her and now Obama does.. Hillary no feminist, more like doormat,” Rubin wrote. She went on: “yeah once you take your Yale law degree and go to Arkansas you basically are putting your career in the hands of others.” When Obama adviser David Axelrod tweeted in reply: “Sick. Mitt mouthpiece jumps shark,” Rubin shot back: “so is Obama going to hide behind her skirt Tuesday night? Why would the president let Hillary end her career in disgrace?”

It’s been clear for a while that the Clintons and the Obamas drive the right to surreal heights of psycho-sexual anxiety. They can’t decide whether, with her Benghazi statement, Clinton is somehow emasculating Obama by taking responsibility that should be his, or being abused by him.

I would like to add that some of the worst offenders of these tropes are also supposed Hillary supporters who are featured in this Buzz Feed article today on Dead-Enders.  You’ll recognize a lot names–many that I’ve been purging from my tweeter and face book stream for some time–because the hatred of Obama and nearly rabid dog hatred of anything related to Islam. It  has spilled into some pretty revealing sexist slurs of Hillary and racist slurs of Obama.  Thankfully, our past associations with people that I full admit to personally, severely misjudging is no where to be seen in the article.

But, back to how banging this drum on Hillary and Benghazi is really, really sexist.  Jennifer Rubin is an angry hack who has no place in mainstream journalism.

Let’s unpack the assumptions here.

  1. If your husband cheats on you it makes you less of a feminist.
  2. Hillary Clinton obviously doesn’t bear responsibility for ensuring that ambassadors have sufficient security despite being secretary of state — it’s safe to assume that she didn’t mess up somehow.
  3. She was just covering for Obama, who actually bears responsibility.
  4. Covering for him makes her less of a feminist, and akin to a doormat (even though she’d have obvious selfish and ideological motives for doing so).
  5. Bill Clinton’s actions toward his wife and Obama’s behavior toward his subordinate are analogous.

Rubin managed to pack a lot of inane assumptions into that one tweet! In doing so, she demonstrated the very double standard that ought to call her feminist credentials into question. In every presidential administration, appointees “fall on their swords” in ways large and small. Male appointees are described as good soldiers when they do this for the president they serve.

But a female appointee? For Rubin, a woman doing the same thing is a weak doormat who forfeits the title of feminist. It’s a charge Rubin breezily makes while dredging up the fact that, years ago, Clinton got cheated on, itself a cheap shot that is irrelevant to the controversy at hand. Rubin’s been defending her tweet. She ought to accept censure for her mistake and move on.

So, again, let’s look at what was said last night at the political debate.

President Barack Obama assumed responsibility Tuesday for the deadly terror attack in Libya last month that killed four Americans just hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to shoulder the blame for any mistakes the administration made.

“She works for me,” the president said in New York in his second presidential debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney. “I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do.”

So, again, what do you believe?   The latest right wing conspiracy theory featuring harridans Rice and Clinton?

 The Mail piece features the delicious but extremely dubious claim that Clinton is still gunning for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who backed Obama over Clinton in 2008, and is thus making clear to reporters that the White House, not the State Department, was the source of Rice’s early claim that the attack was inspired by the same anti-Islam movie that was driving protests elsewhere in the region.

“State Department sources have said that Clinton has never forgotten that Rice, who served in her husband Bill’s administration, was an early supporter of Obama,” Harnden reports breathlessly. “Rice has ambitions to take over from Clinton if Obama is re-elected but the Benghazi debacle could scupper her chances.” In fact, the two women became allies on the decision to intervene in Libya, and the idea that Hillary Clinton would talk directly to Toby Hernden to settle an old score with Susan Rice is straight out of the fervid fantasies of Clinton-haters everywhere.  Harnden claims that Clinton’s supposed “announcement of State Department dissent” from Rice and the rest of the Obama administration “could help protect Clinton during 2016 presidential run.” In the end, for the right wing, it all comes back to the Clintons and their ambition.

Is any one besides me getting tired of the never-ending CDS and hyped-up ODS now being turned into kind of supposed  pantomime “October Surprise”? It’s like some kind of hyper-sick form of disco dancing on the graves of four American public servants.  The Romney campaign is so freaking desperate they’ve got surrogates out spouting some of the worst stuff I’ve ever heard. But, remember, it’s all the fault of those grudge-holding, ambitious Clintons and the impossibly incompetent,lazy, and “foreign” Obama.  Who can be so stupid not to see this stuff for what it is?  It’s fricking right wing jerk-off porn for Neo Con Tools.  Any supposed Clinton fan that falls for this is pretty stupid, imho.

Friday Reads

Posted: September 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, New Orleans, Sky Dancing Blog, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 87 Comments

Good Morning!

Banksy encapsulates my feelings on Romney/Ryan; future hell realm beings

So, it’s going to be an interesting few weeks.  I will once again be live blogging the Rising Tide conference of New Orleans Bloggers next Saturday.  The topic is Oil on the Water and it promises to be a great one (Number 7).  This evening I will be a guest on Loisirslit.  This is a radio show dedicated to giving the community of New Orleans information on ways to improve literacy, arts and music.  Its purpose is to inspire citizens to become change agents for these things in New Orleans.  I will be talking about Sky Dancing Blog andabout my role as a New Orleans Blogger at our little corner of the blogosphere.  I’m really excited about both of these projects and their role in shaping the city and its culture.   I’ve always believed that activism begins in the place where you have the most to lose. I will be bringing several people with me to the show.  The first is a representative from Rising Tide.  The second is my friend Otter who runs the Backyard Ballroom.  You may remember my adventures in playing the music for her play “Bourbon Street” a few years ago.  I’m hoping to get some tape to share with you.  We’ll be discussing our hopes for a New Orleans Renaissance. The panel–of which I am one of several people–will discuss the response to Hurricane Issac, our badly defunded and crippled criminal ‘justice’ system, and the quest for a New Orleans Renaissance.  I’m really excited to bring our community here into the spotlight.

Well, some of us in New Orleans are trying to keep it real.  The Republican party remains in the la la land of lies and obfuscation.

The Republicans appear to have nothing left this campaign season but a stack of lies.  BB told me about John Kasich’s outrageous lies and misogyny yesterday.  Try this one on for size: John Kasich: Political Spouses Are At Home Doing Laundry.  Is this the HEY! Iron MY Shirt moment of this election?

Only, his wife is actually a career woman and very active in other things outside the home.  This is not the party of respect for women no matter what their calling.

“It’s not easy to be the spouse of an elected official,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said at a rally for Mitt Romney in Cincinnati on Wednesday. “You know, they’re at home doing the laundry and doing so many things while we’re up here on stage getting a little bit of applause.” His comment set off a flurry of outrage .

But few have pointed out that for many years of Kasich’s political career, his wife worked outside of the home.

According to a 2010 article in The Columbus Dispatch, for nearly twenty years, until around 2002, Karen Kasich worked in marketing and public relations, serving most notably as vice president of public relations at Gerbig, Snell and Weisheimer, a healthcare advertising agency. The Kasichs began dating in 1989 and married in 1997, meaning that for much of the Governor’s political life (which began when he became a member of the Ohio Senate in 1978), Karen Kasich was working outside of the home.

Though she ended her almost two-decades-long professional career two years after giving birth to the couple’s twin daughters, she continues to stay highly involved in public life. Her official website states that she “is honored to have an opportunity to increase awareness on topics that are near and dear to her heart: children’s wellness and women’s heart health” and to this end she works with both The Partnership at Drugfree.org and Ohio Valley’s Go Red For Women Council. She’s run the Columbus and the Air Force marathons, she helped coach the girls’ soccer team, and she met her husband when she helped assemble the Ohio State University football guide and included a picture of the then-Representative.

It seems like Rush Limbaugh and Lynn Cheney are the only ones out defending Romney’s outrageous politicization of the death of US American diplomats through lies and disturbing sociopathic smirks. Limbaugh is on such a streak of unbelievable lies that one has to question if he’s gone back to using drugs.  Maybe Community College Flunk-Outs just shouldn’t be doing foreign policy.

Polite and serious pundits were shocked when Mitt Romney suggested, and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus outright declared, that President Obama “sympathized” with those who killed American diplomats in Libya. But anyone familiar with the alternative universe version of Obama created by the right shouldn’t be too surprised. As TPM’s Josh Marshall wrote, the charge was “picked wholesale from the right-wing blogosphere.”

It’s now taken for granted on the far right that the statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemning the anti-Islamic film that sparked the violence (which was expressly not authorized by the Obama administration) is tantamount to ”apologizing to Al-Qaida,” as Fox News host Steve Doocy said this morning. But for those prone to believe Obama is a secret Muslim radical, or at least feckless enough to sympathize with them, there’s always been that one key bit of evidence that even a heavy does of cognitive dissonance can’t ignore — Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden.

Well, Rush Limbaugh today finally offered a Unified Theory of Obama’s Radical Muslim Sympathies, with a clever workaround for the bin Laden thing: Al-Qaida intentionally “gave up Osama Bin Laden” in order to “mak[e] Obama look good.” The “wild theory,” as Limbaugh himself call it, flagged by Media Matters, says al-Qaida wants to keep Obama in power because the Democrat is bad for Israel, so Islamists have a better chance of destroying the country than under a Republican president:

Liz Cheney has come up with a totally off-the-wall idea that apologies caused the attacks now that we know that Romney’s assertion that the apology came after the attack is completely untrue.  This party not only has a war on women, it has declared war on Truth, Reason, and Reality.

As GOP foreign policy hands balk at Mitt Romney’s statements about the attacks on American diplomats in Libya and Egypt, the governor’s campaign and its surrogates continue to push the line that Obama’s “weak” foreign policy and his purported “apologies” for America invited the violence:

– LIZ CHENEY: “Apologizing for America, appeasing our enemies, abandoning our allies and slashing our military are the hallmarks of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.” [Romney Press Release, 9/12/2012]

– SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): “The United States is weak and withdrawing and that’s why you’re seeing a lot of leaders reacting.” [Today Show, 9/13/2012]

— SEN. JIM INHOFE (R-OK): “What foreign policy? The policy of appeasement. Yes, it’s happening as a result of that.” [The Hill, 9/13/2012]

These direct swipes at the State Department and Hillary Clinton’s leadership of the state department goes beyond the pale.   Are you aware that the Cairo Embassy is actually run by a woman who has been a Clinton, Bush and Obama Appointee?  Ambassador Anne Patterson is one of the most experienced foreign service officers in the diplomatic corps.

Meanwhile, back here in reality where people actually count, SOS Clinton takes time to condemn the violence triggered by religious nuts offending other religious nuts.

Today, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine Al-Othmani launched the U.S.-Morocco Strategic Dialogue at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. Before addressing the first session of this Strategic Dialogue, Secretary Clinton commented on events unfolding in the world. The Secretary said:

“We are closely watching what is happening in Yemen and elsewhere, and we certainly hope and expect that there will be steps taken to avoid violence and prevent the escalation of protests into violence.

“I also want to take a moment to address the video circulating on the internet that has led to these protests in a number of countries. Let me state very clearly — and I hope it is obvious — that the United States Government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. And as you know, we are home to people of all religions, many of whom came to this country seeking the right to exercise their own religion, including, of course, millions of Muslims. And we have the greatest respect for people of faith.

“To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage. But as I said yesterday, there is no justification, none at all, for responding to this video with violence. We condemn the violence that has resulted in the strongest terms, and we greatly appreciate that many Muslims in the United States and around the world have spoken out on this issue.

“Violence, we believe, has no place in religion and is no way to honor religion. Islam, like other religions, respects the fundamental dignity of human beings, and it is a violation of that fundamental dignity to wage attacks on innocents. As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace. It is especially wrong for violence to be directed against diplomatic missions. These are places whose very purpose is peaceful: to promote better understanding across countries and cultures. All governments have a responsibility to protect those spaces and people, because to attack an embassy is to attack the idea that we can work together to build understanding and a better future.”

You can read the Secretary’s full remarks here.

So, would all those Romney backing assholes that call themselves Hillary supporters like to refer to her as an apologist for the sake of consistency or should we think any kind of rationality out of insane right wing nuts is just expecting a bull to give milk?   Again, I find every voting strategy other than voting for Romney/Ryan rational.   Supporting bigotry, racism and lies is unacceptable in my ethos.

There are lots of right wing lies going on about this event.  One of the big ones is that the Marines at the Cairo Embassy weren’t allowed live ammo.  Again, this swipe at Hillary Clinton’s leadership is purely political and aimed at making the Obama administration weak for the benefit of Chicken–4 time draft dodger–Mittens.  This outright lie was hyped by a Fox guest and is all over right wing blogs right now. The Marine Corps itself has discredit this LIE.

In response, the U.S Marine Corps discredited the rumor, calling it “not accurate.” From the Corps congressional liaison’s memo:

The Ambassador did not impose restrictions on weapons or weapons status on the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group (MCESG) detachment.  The MCESG Marines in Cairo were allowed to have live ammunition in their weapons.  The Ambassador and Regional Security Officer have been completely and appropriately engaged with the security situation. Reports of Marines not being able to have their weapons loaded per direction from the Ambassador are not accurate.

Additionally, as Mother Jones points out, a glance at the State Department’s guidelines reveals that an ambassador could not give such an order. Accordingly to State Department regulations, Marines may be assigned “duties other than those previously described in this section to the Marines as may be required by urgent or security-related circumstances requiring immediate action,” but “[s]uch duties shall not contravene established Department or Marine Corps policy and shall not unduly jeopardize the safety or well-being of any Marine.”

 

I’m shuddering at the thought of having any Republican near the Fed right now.  Here’s a Guardian article on ‘Ben Bernanke rescues the US economy from the nihilism of the right’.  My guess would be that Romney wouldn’t care if the economy crashed because he’d just take his family and plant his ass where his money is.

Still, one can only imagine the teeth-gnashing and frothing at the mouth from conservatives and libertarians that will greet Thursday’s announcements.

It’s hard to know if the Republicans simply want to destroy the economy in order to deny Obama re-election, or if they really believe that Bernanke is corrupting the soul of America. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s what Ben Bernanke does that matters.

Contrast this act of lashing himself to the mast to the hesitant and diffident statements made by the Fed chairman earlier this year, in which he admitted that the economy was doing poorly but wouldn’t commit to doing anything about it. And compare earlier statements of angst over tarnishing the Fed’s “hard-won inflation credibility” to the more recent statement of concern about the fate of America’s unemployed. Back then, it was clear that Bernanke, the clear-minded professor who knew what needed to be done, had been sidelined by Bernanke, the brow-beaten and bullied. Not any longer.

I suspect that the right’s unyielding and vitriolic nihilism towards the economy has been an education for Professor Bernanke. From Thursday’s actions, we can only infer that it has finally freed Chairman Bernanke to do the right thing.

 I have a feeling that Bernanke will eventually change his voter registration.  I’m not sure what to, but I’m pretty positive that he’s too smart to be a Republican or to back Romney.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

The Big Dawg on Deck: A Sneak Preview

Posted: September 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: , , , | 43 Comments

Whatever bad blood went on between Presidents Obama and Clinton around 2008 seems to be so much political dust in the wind right now.  Clinton appears to be fired up and ready to go for his nominating speech at the DNC.

Bill Clinton fired up the Arkansas delegation at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, blasting Republicans for piling up the national debt and giving a preview of the speech he will give to the full convention on Wednesday.

“This economy that [President Obama] inherited was profoundly ruined. Nobody who’s ever served — no one, including me — has ever been expected to turn it around overnight,” Clinton said. “The economy failed and hit bottom six months after Republicans took office. Nine percent. That’s almost Depression-level shrinkage. And I’ll give you the details tomorrow night, but that’s quite a blow.”

“And it was really interesting to me that when [Obama] was trying so hard to put Americans back to work — two full years before the election — the Senate Republican leader said that their number one goal was not to put America back to work, it was to put the president out of work,” he added.

Clinton spoke to several hundred attendees at a fundraiser in his honor, sponsored by the Arkansas Democratic Party. Actors Adrian Grenier and Ashley Judd, as well as musician will.i.am, also spoke and celebrated the former president. The crowd warmly embraced Clinton as an old friend, yelling, “That’s our Bill!” and reminiscing about his time in Arkansas beforehand.

Clinton also made fun of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for offering so few policy details in his convention speech, joking that it was a good idea because if the American public heard them, they wouldn’t vote for them.

“They tell us they’re good husbands, good fathers and good Americans. Totally self-made. And you can trust me. See me after the election for the details,” he said, summing up how he interpreted the speeches in at last week’s Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

But perhaps the main point of Clinton’s speech was putting the blame for the national debt squarely at the GOP’s doorstep.

He pointed to the giant national debt clock that Republicans had at their convention, saying, “You see that debt clock?”

“They built it!” shouted a man in the audience.

“Yeah, they built it. They built it,” replied Clinton, to loud cheers and laughs from the audience.

The Big Dawg has street cred on balanced budgets.  He has cred on a lot of things. He is the best retail politician I have ever seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen him speak and work a crowd many times down here in New Orleans.

One of the biggest, weirdest tropes coming out of the Republican propaganda machines these days is the imaginary ‘wedge’ between the former and current president.  I see absolutely no evidence of it.   You really have to wonder how many lies the Republicans think the American people will swallow.  It has to be a cynical attempt to grab votes.  You can tell when the Big Dawg is pissed at some one.  It’s really obvious.  I think Clinton realizes that Obama’s legacy is tied to the Clinton legacy in many ways.  I’m not alone in that thought.

Tonight, former president Bill Clinton gives the official nominating speech for the Democratic National Convention. It’s an understatement to say there’s a good deal of anticipation around what Clinton will say. For as much as both campaigns are focused on the future, this election is as much a referendom on Clinton’s presidency as it is a choice between two competing visions.

President Obama has explicitly presented himself as the natural extension of Clinton’s legacy. His administration is staffed with Clinton veterans, his secretary of state is the former First Lady, and his signature policies are a more muscular spin on the centrist approach that characterized Clinton’s first term. Indeed, one of the most recent television ads from Team Obama — “Clear Choice” — features Clinton as he speaks directly into the camera and tells viewers: “President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, investing in innovation, education and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class. That’s what happened when I was president. We need to keep going with his plan.”

The one noticeable pol missing is Al Gore.

He isn’t coming to the Democratic National Convention but is spending the week in New York City, anchoring coverage of the event for his network Current TV.

Gore’s evolution over the past four years — from a central figure in the Democratic Party to a no-show at its biggest event — matches what has happened to the issue of climate change itself, which moved to the sidelines alongside its chief crusader, environmentalists and some Democrats say.

It’s not like Gore hasn’t noticed — and his frustration with Obama has been on display. He’s leveled criticism at Obama for abandoning the push for a climate change bill. He accused him of failing to use the bully pulpit to spread the word about the dangers of rising global temperatures. And he faulted Obama for putting off tough new smog regulations.

On the other hand, Gore has also offered some defense of Obama’s record and says that “I would fear for the future of our environmental policy” if Mitt Romney wins the election.

People who know Gore say this is the role where he feels he can make a difference now — critic and outsider, more activist than politician.

This is a situation where a look back to the past is actually a good thing as compared to the retro-vision of the Republican Party.  The Clinton Economy was a period of great growth for every one in the country.   I am sure that Clinton will bathe in the spotlight.  The man adores it.

However, I’m looking forward to him making the case for the current President.   We are also looking for that hint of answer to the big question of Hillary in 2016.  Will anything suggest this in anyway?

And if everything goes the former president’s way, it could conceivably lead to another Clinton winning the White House in 2016. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is not on the premises, in keeping with the diplomatic tradition of steering clear of partisan politics, but her husband’s ubiquitousness here would certainly come in handy during any future presidential try by her.

All this is possible because, nearly 12 years after leaving office still marred by impeachment, the former president is arguably the most popular figure on the political scene. His personal approval ratings have never been higher, easily exceeding Obama’s. His easy drawl is bombarding the airwaves in battleground state television ads broadcast by the Obama team.

Obama has asked Clinton to place his name in nomination, which makes him the first ex-president to have that honor and provides further proof, if any were needed, of his importance to the reelection effort.

Clinton is already raising money for Obama from wealthy donors and volunteering strategic advice. “He calls me frequently,” said a senior Obama campaign official in Chicago. “He is all the way in.”

He is also keeping the family business alive while his wife finishes her term as secretary of State. He has been making endorsements in down-ballot races and raising money for Democrats who backed her presidential campaign and could be in a position to help her again.

Secretary Clinton, one of the few figures on the national scene whose aura rivals her husband’s, has seen her personal ratings rebound to near-record highs during her tenure as the nation’s senior diplomat. She has announced plans to return to private life after the 2012 election, prompting intense speculation about another bid for the Democratic nomination.

“Why wouldn’t she run?” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has said, echoing the assessment of many others inside and outside Clinton circles. She would turn 69 in 2016, but even those who say she hasn’t made up her mind don’t think age would be an impediment.

Because she will be on the opposite side of the planet Wednesday — meeting with China’s leaders as part of a 10-day, six-nation trip — her husband will not only be promoting Obama and burnishing his own legacy in Charlotte. He’ll be her stand-in too, said Ann Lewis, a top Clinton White House aide and senior advisor in Secretary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. “He’s been practicing the role of spouse for several years,” she said. “He’s pretty good at it.”

This would be a past, present and a future to look forward to.  That would be a real change.

Friday Reads: Morning Granola Mix of Fruits, Nuts & Flakes

Posted: August 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, right wing hate grouups, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Good Morning!

Okay, let’s just say it’s been an interesting summer and get on with the links.

Dana Milbank at WAPO writes about “Modern-day McCarthyism regarding Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin”.

There are frequent bouts of McCarthyism in the capital, but the latest version has the special touch of being delivered by a guy named McCarthy.This McCarthy isn’t your average Joe: Andrew McCarthy’s work is providing the intellectual underpinnings — such as they are — for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s outrageous suggestion that Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

McCarthy gave a 90-minute talk at the National Press Club on Wednesday morning sponsored by the conservative Center for Security Policy, which was the source cited by Bachmann (R-Minn.) in her letter challenging Abedin’s loyalty. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and other top Republicans justifiably blasted Bachmann, but McCarthy defended the congresswoman and went her allegation one further — drawing a twisted line from Abedin all the way to al-Qaeda.

“I don’t understand why more people in Washington from both parties have not rallied in support of Congresswoman Bachmann” and her fellow signatories on the letter, McCarthy lamented, “at a time when government policy is being radically harmonized with the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning policy has shifted in the direction of avowed enemies of the United States.”

In fact, the accuser went on, Bachmann “actually understated the case” against the Clinton aide. “Ms. Abedin had a very lengthy affiliation with an institute founded by a top figure at the nexus between Saudi terror funding, Brotherhood ideology and al-Qaeda’s jihad against the United States.”

If Abedin is in fact a Muslim Brotherhood plant spreading sharia law in the United States, she’s using unorthodox methods: posing provocatively for a Vogue spread, then marrying and having the child of a Jewish congressman who sent out a photo of his genitals on Twitter. As Clinton’s personal aide, helping her boss with suits and handbags and logistics, she has not been in an ideal position to advance the alleged cause. Even McCarthy admits that she’s “not a policymaker.”

This is just plain disgusting.Well,here’s some one that sounds like they had my experience way back in the day when I could find sane people in the Republican party. I probably could’ve written this book. But, I didn’t. Alternet has printed an excerpt from ” The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted ,” by Mike Lofgren.

Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

Clearly, we have to be able to talk about the rising tide of right-wing, racist organizing. The ginned-up controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s 2009 report on the rise of hate groups looks particularly stupid now, given that Page seems straight out of the pages of the report.  “Rightwing Extremism” predicted that a troubled economy plus the election of a black president could inspire a rise in racist hate groups and actions.  The report was particularly concerned with “lone wolves.” As Jonathan Capehart has already noted, it found that “lone wolves … embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

It went on to say that “white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts.” The report also noted that military experience could make such lone wolves particularly dangerous. Page was a veteran (I’m not implying veterans are violence prone). Wells Fargo foreclosed on his North Carolina home in January. His girlfriend reportedly dumped him in June. He was a lone wolf who lost his home and was already deep into white supremacist insanity. We don’t know when, or why, he moved to violence. But “Rightwing Extremism” seems prescient now.

Instead of being hailed, or simply ignored (as government reports tend to be), it inspired a clamorous right-wing backlash against even the possibility that extremist right-wing rhetoric married to ideas of racial superiority might result in violence. Matt Drudge, who regularly trumpets supposedly under-covered stories about crime by African-Americans (particularly stories that feature white victims), was one of the loudest voices of opposition to the release of the DHS report, which had been commissioned by George W. Bush. One Drudge banner headline shrieked “SHE IS WATCHING YOU,” she being Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. So racial profiling and stereotyping is fine when it comes to crime by African-Americans, but not by whites. We’re used to that kind of double standard from Drudge, whose site some days resembles Stormfront in its hysterical hyping of black-on-white crime.

Some conservatives even object to the Southern Poverty Law Center characterizing Page, along with his racist musical colleagues, as white supremacists. Silly contrarian Ann Althouse objected to the SPLC terming the bands Page has belonged to “racist white power” bands, adding, “I’m not sure how they know that.” Oh, I don’t know, Ann, maybe because an album cover of one of Page’s bands, Definite Hate, featured an illustration of a white arm punching a black man’s face? Reuters found a YouTube video for Definite Hate that referred to lyrics including: “Wake Up, White man, For Your Race, And your land,” and “Wake Up People Or Your (sic) Gonna Die!” Page himself talked about going to Georgia’s white-power music festival Hammerfest. Is that evidence enough for you? Althouse and her dittohead commenters accused the SPLC of stigmatizing and demonizing “punk rock” generally, which of course they absolutely didn’t do.

I have no problem with the SPLC tracking white power bands. I was appalled when Napolitano withdrew the “Rightwing Extremism” report after the faux-controversy. Al-Qaida expert Peter Bergen notes that there have been twice as many right-wing terror attacks as Muslim terror attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, and suggests the government isn’t taking it as seriously. I don’t believe in racial profiling, of any group, but I think we should take the terror potential in right-wing extremist organizing as seriously as we take the potential in any violence-committed group. (Although at the end of an otherwise insightful piece, Bergen warns about “left wing extremist groups,” even though he fails to give any examples of them.)

 Speaking of gun-toting nutters, here’s one on George Zimmerman from The Orlando Sentinel: “Can Zimmerman win ‘stand your ground’ hearing?”

Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, on Thursday formally announced that he would defend Zimmerman using Florida’s now much-debated “stand your ground” law.

That means he’ll schedule a trial-like hearing, put on evidence and try to show that Zimmerman was afraid — and that it was a reasonable fear — that Trayvon was on the verge of killing or severely injuring him.

If he’s successful, a judge will throw out the second-degree-murder charge.

“There is clear support for a strong claim of self-defense,” O’Mara wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Central Florida lawyers predicted that, based on the evidence released so far by prosecutors, Zimmerman has a strong chance of winning.

“He’s assaulted, and he claims he’s on the ground, fighting for his life. I don’t see how a judge does not grant that motion,” said Robert Buonauro, an Orlando defense lawyer who has been through three “stand your ground” hearings, one that cleared his client.

“He was in a place where he had a right to be. He wasn’t violating any laws. He was attacked. There’s no other witness to contradict his testimony,” Buonauro said.

That last point — that no other witness saw the entire encounter — is key, according to experts. An Orlando Sentinel review of Central Florida “stand your ground” cases found that suspects were far more likely to be exonerated if they were the lone surviving witness.

Prosecution Investigator Dale Gilbreath testified at a bond hearing April 20 that prosecutors had no evidence — other than Zimmerman’s statement — about who struck the first blow Feb. 26, the night Zimmerman and Trayvon got into a fight and wound up in a wrestling match on the ground that ended with the teenager shotin the heart.

“I think we all understand that you don’t win without putting your client on the stand,” said Orlandodefense attorney Diana Tennis. “It all looks pretty darned good for him, but he is going to make or break that hearing.”

What Zimmerman must make clear is that he was afraid of Trayvon, she said.

And to qualify for immunity under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, his fear must be reasonable and he must have believed that unless heacted immediately, he would have died or been severely injured.

Zimmerman’s account to authorities, on its face, appears to comport with the law, Tennis said, but there is one major drawback: “[He] doesn’t do so well on the stand,” she said. “That’s a huge worry.”

Grab your popcorn for that one!  Okay, away from gun nutterz and back to religious nutterz.

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has sunk to a new, disturbing low with his anti-gay statements. In two separatetweets last night, he called for an “Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.” In one tweet  he was referring to the sad story of Lisa Miller, who, after declaring herself ex-gay, kidnapped her daughter away to Central America to prevent her former partner from having any custody. (She is still being tracked by federal agents as a fugitive of the law.)

In the other tweet, Fischer referred to the testimony of a individual named Robert Oscar Lopez, who blames all of his social problems on being raised by his mom and her lesbian partner.

Okay, well that’s a few nuts, flakes, and fruits to keep you wondering what’s happened to sanity in this country. There’s a whole lot unpopped kernels at the bottom of our bowl these days.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Tuesday Reads: It’s Too Darn Hot!!

Posted: July 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Politics, US & Canada | Tags: , , , , , , | 49 Comments

Good Morning!!

I’ve really been suffering from the heat for the past couple of days. I don’t have air conditioning, but I do have lots of fans. I’m OK as long as I’ve got the fans on me, but I think the stress of day after day of 90 degree temperatures has started to get to me. So I’m going to just throw out some links that caught my eye and then open the floor to you all.

At Forbes Magazine, a subscriber named TJ Walker has a list of 35 Questions Mitt Romney Must Answer About Bain Capital Before The Issue Can Go Away. It’s a pretty good list too–not the kind of thing I’d expect to find at Forbes.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn had an op-ed in The New York Times in which he criticizes Grover Norquist. Here’s what he wrote about taxes:

What unifies Republicans is not Mr. Norquist’s tortured definition of tax purity but the idea of a Reagan- or Kennedy-style tax reform that lowers rates and broadens the tax base by getting rid of loopholes and deductions. It’s true that Republicans would prefer to lower rates as much as possible, and it’s true that Republicans believe smart tax reform will generate more, not less, revenue for the federal government. But Republicans would not walk away from a grand bargain on entitlements and tax reform that would devote a penny of revenue to deficit reduction instead of rate reduction.

Apparently Norquist’s control over Congressional Republicans has weakened substantially.

Norquist was very upset by Coburn’s op-ed and actually called Coburn a liar.

Norquist told The Hill that the piece is filed with “lies” and said that Coburn is violating, and trying to get colleagues to violate, a pledge they made to voters.

“It is like a couple that is having a fight and one of them tries to drag a third party in. Like the preacher who gave a speech last week against adultery. ‘Hey, this is your fault!’ ‘No, no, no! You promised her you would behave, you didn’t promise me. You explain to her why you get to make decisions on adultery.’ ”

He said that the idea of not raising taxes is what is powerful and pointed out that more GOP candidates have signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge than ever before. He said that presidential candidate Mitt Romney has fully embraced the pledge as written.

Norquist said the pledge is not open to “interpretation,” as Coburn insinuates, and plainly states that ending tax breaks must be accompanied by equivalent rate reductions.

WTF? Like a couple having a fight? It appears that Norquist has forgotten who is actually in a position of power in his relationship with Coburn. He may have gone too far this time.

Speaking of crazy people, what’s going on with Michele Bachmann? In a throwback to the McCarthy Communist witch hunts, she’s apparently claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the upper reaches of the U.S. government.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is asking how a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got security clearance given what Bachmann describes as the aide’s family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Bachmann also says an investigation of “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of President Barack Obama’s administration is needed because of interactions between federal agencies and what she calls U.S. front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist group that recently came to power in Egypt.

The comments come in Bachmann’s new response to U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison’s call for Bachmann to back up the information on which she based a request for federal investigations into whether the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government.

Ellison, DFL-Minneapolis, wrote Bachmann and four other lawmakers last week asking them to name their sources for similar claims on which they based their June 13 call for the investigation.

Good Grief! Salon has more.

“I am particularly interested in exactly how, given what we know from the international media about Ms. Abedin’s documented family connections with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, she was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance,” the congresswoman wrote.

As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.

The next paragraph of the law review article she cites quotes Syed Abedin concluding that the Koran calls for, “multiple ways of life … i.e. religious and cultural plurality among mankind.” Pretty scary Islamo-fascist stuff. It’s also worth nothing that Weiner, Huma Abedin’s husband, is one of the most unquestionably pro-Israeli politicians in America. But Bachmann would have us believe that the security clearance process somehow missed Abedin’s nefarious connections, and thus she knows more than, say, the CIA and FBI, who are involved in the background-check process.

Michele Bachmann is dangerously unhinged–to use a word popular with right wingers. I’m beginning to wonder if she is actually psychotic.

The Boston Globe: John Kerry’s office blasts Mitt Romney over inaccurate claims about tax returns

Romney and his surrogates have repeatedly claimed that Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, made public just two years of tax returns, despite the fact that Kerry released five years of tax documents and consistently released earlier returns during his Senate races.

On Monday, after Romney brought Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, into the argument, the senator’s office blasted Romney, accusing him of “conjuring up false and convoluted alibis.”

“As Senator [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan once said, people are entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts,” said David Wade, Kerry’s chief of staff and the Democrat’s national spokesman during the presidential race eight years ago.

“The Romney campaign needs to stop getting their facts wrong about John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry,” Wade added, saying Kerry had put a total of 20 years of tax returns into the public domain by the time he ran for president.

What’s the deal with Mitt Romney hiding behind a former candidate’s wife anyway? Does he want people to start asking to see Ann Romney’s tax returns?

Today a CNN reporter asked Hillary Clinton how she felt about being used in Romney’s attack ads against Obama.

Speaking in Jerusalem at the tail end of a two week diplomatic trip, Clinton said in an interview with CNN Foreign Affairs Reporter Elise Labott the spots were a “waste of money.”

“I am out of politics, and I haven’t seen any of the ads that you’re talking about,” Clinton said. “But I have to say it’s a waste of money. Everybody knows I ran against President Obama in 2008, that’s hardly news. Everybody knows we ran a hard fought campaign and he won. And I have been honored to serve as his secretary of state.”

Good answer. Too bad she’s out of politics.

There’s an article at Bloomberg, of all places, on why socialism has made Canada richer than the U.S.

On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.
According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.

A few days later, Canada and the U.S. both released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. Canada continues to thrive while the U.S. struggles to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine curve of hope and despair.

The difference grows starker by the month: The Canadian system is working; the American system is not. And it’s not just Canadians who are noticing. As Iceland considers switching to a currency other than the krona, its leaders’ primary focus of interest is the loonie — the Canadian dollar.

As a study recently published in the New York University Law Review pointed out, national constitutions based on the American model are quickly disappearing. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an interview on Egyptian television, admitted, “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” The natural replacement? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, achieving the status of legal superstar as it reaches its 30th birthday.

Let’s see Mitt Romney explain that one.

Sorry this post is a little brief, but that’s all I have the energy for at the moment. Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

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