Britain Votes (274-12) To Recognize A Palestinian State,

Click here for an article by Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars entitled British Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly In Favor Of Recognizing Palestine State, 247-12.

According to Labour member Andy Slaughter, Israel has engaged in a new “barbarism”:

I think that the British people have been on the same sort of journey as the Right Hon. Member for Croydon South [Conservative Sir Richard Ottaway] described. It is certainly true of the Labour movemen -- from being very sympathetic to Israel as a country that was trying to achieve democracy and was embattled, to seeing it now as a bully and a regional superpower. That is not something I say with any pleasure, but since the triumph of military Zionism and the Likud-run governments [Netanyahu] we have seen a new barbarism in that country.

Madrak says:

One lawmaker says that the occupation is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several describe Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long before Palestinians used the tactic. Labour and Conservative members alike speak about the role of the Israel lobby in the United States.

I seldom read comments to blog posts, but here's just a quick sample of the first of the comments:

* Chris L'Hommedieu • a day ago
So here's how I look at it. You go to war. You win. You put the losers in a very small box. No-one else helps them out either. You build walls. You occupy every inch of their box. You periodically make their box smaller as "settlers" move into the box. You prevent them from either moving around inside the box, or ever leaving the box. Every now and then the people in the box get really really pissed and throw things at you, but don't do much actual damage. But its scary as hell when they do it. So you blow the crap out of the box, killing piles of them. Then you send in more settlers and take more of the box.

And you're shocked, amazed, and appalled that the people in the box hate you and want to kill you.

Repeat. Decade after decade.

* Bill Lumbergh • a day ago

And the sick thing is that Israeli/U.S. govt. propaganda asserts that it's Israel that's in the box.

* Gil Randall • 12 hours ago
It was, but only in the earliest years.

By the mid-50s or so, after Egypt got the Soviet Union to support them, that was when Israel got the US involved to back them and, initially anyway, Israel and the Arab states were just more countries used by the US and the Soviet Union to fight proxy wars as a dick-waving contest against each other for the next forty years.

But as soon as the "religious" people got involved in the 60s, that's when the politicians (and Israeli leaders) starting merging more and more so that even after Egypt made peace (1979), then the Soviet Union collapsed (1991), then Jordan made peace (1994), they still look at Palestinians with contempt.

By today's standards, with the Soviet Union gone, two of the Arab state former antagonists out of the equation (including the largest and strongest one, Egypt), Syria and Iraq too embroiled in chaos and/or civil war, and Lebanon having absolutely no chance on its own if they even think about trying anything, there should be no reason for the US to be SO closely tied to Israel anymore beyond just allies (much less billions of dollars in equipment and such), and religious dogma is really the only reason.

FOX NEWS FLASH: Obama Will Give Iran Nukes In Exchange For ISIS Help!

Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland (born c. July 24, 1951) is an American communications consultant. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1985. She also served as a speech writer to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate Republican nomination in New York in 2006 and is currently a Fox News contributor on foreign policy and national security issues.

McFARLAND: Or, I think the more likely, he's going to partner with Iran and he's going to say, you know, you, the pro-Iranian, Iraqi army, the Shiite militias,we're all going to work together to get rid of ISIS and Iran will have a price tag on that, and that will be nuclear weapons.

As karoli says at Crooks & Liars:

That's right, folks. After spending years on delicate negotiations and heavy sanctions on Iran to keep them from developing nuclear weapons, KT McFarland actually thinks the most likely scenario is that President Obama will sign over a few nukes in exchange for their participation in the eradication of ISIS.

Jon Stewart v. Hank Greenberg (AIG)

When's the last time you got good and angry about the financiers that tanked the world economy in 2008?

Want to?

Helping The Little One ...

Reagan + China = Economic Disaster

Click here for an article by Dave Johnson at Crooks & Liars entitled "Reagan Set Up The Death Of The Middle Class, But China Was The Clincher."

Reagan directed the flow of power and money into the hands of a few; they used that power and money to outsource the American economy to China. Germany, though, with stronger labor unions, followed a different economic model where the wealth was more evenly distributed, and thus has a much stronger middle class today.

LBJ's War On Poverty - 50 Years Later

Click here for an article by Mark E. Andersen at Daily Kos from 2008, entitled "The Counteroffensive on the War on Poverty." That counteroffensive was launched by Ronald Reagan. When Johnson announced the "War on Poverty" in 1964, the poverty rate was 19%; today it's 15%. Not really astonishing improvement for 50 years, is it?

Well, when Reagan took office in 1980, after only 16 years, the rate had fallen to 11.4%. But after Reagan's counteroffensive "War on the Poor," it had risen to -- 15%, the same as it is today.

The Kochs' Criminal Enterprise

Click here for an article by Charles Pierce in Esquire entitled "Criminal Minds."

Thanks to Harry Reid's recent efforts, a lot more people have become aware that Charles and David Koch are a couple of America's richest men who are trying to buy state and federal governments: House members, senators, and judges at both levels -- not to mention the U.S. presidency. But a lot of those people are not aware that Chuck and Dave are the sons of Fred C. Koch, a prime mover behind the radical John Birch Society (hell, a lot of them are probably not aware of what the John Birch Society is).

Nor are a lot of those people aware of just how big a polluter Koch Industries is:

Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Koch's pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers. The volume of Koch Industries' toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.

Good Links

Jon and Stephen both hit this one out of the park. I hope I can add this when I have more time.

Sock It To Me??? Richard Nixon On Laugh-In, 1968

Obama: Best Economic President Of Modern Times?

Click here for an article by Adam Hartung at Forbes, that bastion of liberal progressivism, entitled "Obama Outperforms Reagan on Jobs, Growth, and Investing."

Hartung discusses various ways in which economic performance is measured, and the article concludes:

Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories. Simultaneously the current administration has reduced the deficit, which skyrocketed under Reagan. Additionally, Obama has reduced federal employment, which grew under Reagan (especially when including military personnel,) and truly delivered a “smaller government.” Additionally, the current administration has kept inflation low, even during extreme international upheaval, failure of foreign economies (Greece) and a dramatic slowdown in the European economy.

Ben Carson: U.S. Could Be Like Nazi Germany ...

Black tea party conservative darling Ben Carson (h/t Driftglass):

"You can't dance around it," Carson told The Washington Post's Ben Terris. "If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they'd have to agree. Most people in Germany didn't agree with what Hitler was doing…Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in."

In February Carson suggested that liberals could turn the country into Nazi Germany...

After which comes Driftglass's devastating reply:

But you know what? I actually agree with what Dr. Carson said, although not in any way that would make him happy.

The despair and rage and paranoia of post-WWI Germany that made the rise of Nazism possible -- an overpowering sense of betrayal and lost greatness... an obsession with race and purity... a berserk hatred of impure outsiders and immigrants... a willingness to believe the most paranoid conspiracies about fifth columns and internal enemies ... the relentless scapegoating of (among others) minorities, foreigners, intellectuals, unions and Liberals ... the round-the-clock raving of demagogues -- are precisely the same toxic conditions which prevail within the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement today.

And, just as in Germany, all of it is being purposefully orchestrated and bankrolled by wealthy industrialists, propagandists, amoral opportunists, con men and various other psychopaths and scumbags.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Exxon Hates Your Children - And The World

Bob Rankin - Microsoft Fix It Solution Center

Click here for a Bob Rankin article entitled "Microsoft Fix It Solution Center." Bob claims that at the time of writing this article, Microsoft had 270 Fix It Solutions to common computer problems. There is a one-click option, "Run Now," that simply solves the problem you've selected, or you can click "Learn More" to find out exactly what steps will be taken. (I wish I'd had this a couple of weeks ago, when a Microsoft patch or update bricked my computer -- of course, it wouldn't boot, so I couldn't have accessed it anyway.)

"Demote Reagan From Hero To History"

Click here for an excellent op-ed in the NY Times by Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, entitled "Bring Back the Party of Lincoln." Can the Republican party reorganize itself, as it has twice in the past, to serve the needs of the general public rather than the wealthy? I like the closing sentence:

The same rebranding is possible today, if Republicans demote Reagan from hero to history and rally to a leader like Lincoln, Roosevelt or Eisenhower — someone who believes that the government should promote economic opportunity rather than protect the rich.

Margaret Thatcher On Global Warming

Taken from Youtube:

Published on May 17, 2012

Recently, the Heartland Institute, a hotbed of Climate Contrarianism, posted a billboard near a Chicago freeway. The Billboard suggested that those who accept mainstream science in regard to climate change, are like Ted Kaczinsky, the Unabomber. Heartland promised to follow up with similar billboards featuring Fidel Castro, Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson.

When a scathing barrage of internet protests and parodies went viral, Heartland was forced to withdraw the billboard, and post a defense on its website. Even then, they continued to maintain that "the most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists, they are murderers, tyrants, and madmen."

Margaret Thatcher thought different -- and she had a chemistry degree from Oxford and experience as a researcher.

Elaine Breaks Bad

It's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, and Aaron Paul -- bitch!

Auburn v. Alabama - Crazy U.S. College Sports

Auburn Tigers v. Alabama Crimson Tide: The Iron Bowl, one of the most passionate rivalries in college football. The name comes from the fact that the game used to be played annually in Birmingham, Alabama, with its strong connections to the steel industry. Now the game, played on Thanksgiving weekend, alternates between Auburn and Tuscaloosa (home of the Crimson Tide). The two teams first played each other in 1893; they met sporadically in following years until the game became an annual fixture starting in 1948. In 2014, Alabama leads the series, 42-35-1.

Alabama is a major force on the national college football scene, having won the South East Conference title 23 times. But Auburn, a much smaller school, is no slouch; it has won 8 SEC titles over the years. Auburn claims two national titles, in 1957 and 2011, while The Tide claim 15. (The word "claim" is used because there is no actual playoff to determine a collegiate national champion; the teams are ranked and voted on by sports writers, so sometimes a "title" can be disputed or controversial.

The video clip is of a British visitor's experience of the game. (He seems to find the flyover a bit of a surprise.)

ISIS? Take Care Of It Locally

Click here for an article by kos, at Daily Kos, entitled "Islamic State is a threat, so let the neighbors deal with it," Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have military forces that are bristling with U.S.-supplied aircraft and armaments.

Hey, guys -- time to step up in your own defense.

Mitch McConnell Caught On Tape

Here's the entirety of an article from the editors of the New York Times entitled "No Comment Necessary: The Gosh Darn Minimum Wage."

The Nation magazine obtained an audio tape of Senator Mitch McConnell discussing strategy with wealthy donors at a conference convened by the Koch brothers. He said he would seek to shrink the federal government “across the board” and explained what the Senate would look like if he were to become majority leader.

Via The Nation

And we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage (inaudible)—cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment—that’s a great message for retirees; uh, the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse, uh. These people believe in all the wrong things.

He also shared his opinion on money in politics:

So all Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech….We now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times. The Supreme Court allowed all of you to participate in the process in a variety of different ways. You can give to the candidate of your choice. You can give to Americans for Prosperity, or something else, a variety of different ways to push back against the party of government.

Click here for the article, which also includes an audio clip.

UPDATE: Here's Daily Kos's take on McConnell's comments made to wealthy donors, not realizing he's being recorded, by Joan McCarter, in a post entitled "Mitch McConnell exposes Kochs' extremist agenda, and just how committed to it he is":

The audio leak from this summer's Koch brothers secret confab has provided a treasure trove of information about just how deeply Republican Senate candidates are embedded in the Koch brothers' pocket. Iowa's Joni Ernst credits the Kochs with her political life. Arkansan's Tom Cotton votes Koch rather than Arkansas. And Colorado's Cory Gardner was blatant in his begging to have his race bankrolled by the Koch cabal.

But it's Mitch McConnell that takes the cake, and who demonstrates as clear as can be the really extreme agenda Republicans are buying into. After declaring that "in the House and Senate, we own the budget," McConnell describes how he can shut the government down.

"We can pass the spending bill, and I assure you that in the spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill: No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board.

"And we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage—cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment—that’s a great message for retirees; the student loan package the other day; that’s going to make things worse. These people believe in all the wrong things."

That means defunding Obamacare, cutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which has saved Americans nearly $13 billion annually just in lower fees and interest charges for credit cards), and slashing the budget of the oil-baron Kochs' nemesis, the EPA. It means being willing to shut down the government for that agenda. It means going against the political will of the nation—74 percent support raising the minimum wage, 69 percent support extending unemployment benefits—to do the Kochs' bidding.

Laura Clawson pointed out earlier that McConnell's public justification for blocking all action on anything the American public wants is because of Harry Reid's totalitarian control over the Senate. Clearly, that's hooey. This has nothing to do with principle, and everything to do with representing the interests of Charles and David Koch and friends.

Blacks Are Inferior, Says Black Preacher - h/t Ted Nugent

Click here for a racist rant by black preacher James David Manning, a clip which gets the comment "“TRUER LOVE THERE HAS NEVER BEEN" from racemonger Ted Nugent. It's from a clip entitled "Ted Nugent Loves Insane Pastor James David Manning's Racist Rant" by Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch:

“You niggas are crazy,” Manning says about black voters who supported Obama in the sermon posted by Nugent. “We’re not going to ever get anywhere until we get in the mind of a black man. He doesn’t think correctly. He can be doctor, he can be an astrophysicist; the nigga ain’t got no sense.”

“The worst thing that ever happened to South Africa was when they gave it to Nelson Mandela and black folk,” he added. “Black folk don’t know how to run no nation.”

There's a whole lot more; Manning's "sermon" is six and a half minutes of self-loathing and hatred. How can these charlatans sleep at night? It's like the question "How can you shoot women and children who are running for their lives," asked of a Vietnam War-era helicopter gunner: "Easy. You just don't lead 'em so much."

Pat Robertson Finds His Nurse Too Intrusive, Calls For Revolution

Click here for a post on Right Wing Watch, Pat Robertson demanding revolution because his nurse asks him too many questions.

ROBERTSON: (A nurse is asking him too many questions) We need a revolution in this country to change this stuff ... A doctor working for $12 an hour and his wife working for a couple of dollars an hour --

BIMBO: Socialism.

ROBERTSON: it isn't right.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need a revolution to stop these so-called progressives from destroying this country any more, but they're getting pretty close to the tipping point. It is not a pleasant scenario. And -- I didn't vote for him, and maybe you didn't vote for him, but the American people voted him into office twice, and this is the result. We -- we -- you know, get what we -- you know, reap what we sow.

Paul Krugman: Mea Culpa

Click here for a Paul Krugman article dated September 1, 2010, in which he confesses to mistakes he has made (two, that he considers to be of significance).

Will this force me to resile from my former position that Paul Krugman is God?

Not yet. I'll get back to you.

I'm reminded of the joke: Have you ever made any mistakes?

Yes. Once I thought I had made a mistake.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Political Figure

Click here for an article in Time entitled "The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race," by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (ne Lew Alcindor).

First, some information about Kareem. Time's blurb says:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time National Basketball Association champion and league Most Valuable Player. He is also a celebrated author, filmmaker and education ambassador.

Wikipedia goes into a little more detail. Here's a section on his basketball career:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr.; April 16, 1947) is a retired American professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. A member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two as an assistant coach, Abdul-Jabbar twice was voted NBA Finals MVP. In 1996, he was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. NBA coach Pat Riley and players Isiah Thomas and Julius Erving have called him the greatest basketball player of all time.

I was aware that he was more than just possibly the best basketball player ever; I was even aware that he was a pretty good writer. He's also been expressing his political views for a long time, as Wikipedia says:

Alcindor boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics by deciding not to join the United States Men's Olympic Basketball team that year, protesting the unequal treatment of African-Americans in the United States.

I first noticed his writing during the notorious L.A. Clippers/Donald Sterling controversy. Here's an entry from an ABC News blog at the time:

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said today that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s derogatory remarks about blacks are more evidence that racism is still part of American culture, but “things have to change.”

“This is a problem. I did a little bit of research, more whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism… That’s why we have shows like ‘Ghostbusters’ and don’t have shows like ‘Racistbusters,’” Abdul-Jabbar said today in an interview with George Stephanopoulos. “It’s something that’s still part of our culture and people hold on to some of these ideas and practices just out of habit and saying that, ‘Well, that’s the way it always was.’ But things have to change.”

In the linked article, Kareem says the roots of the present class conflict can be found in May of 1970. Everyone knows about the killing of four student protesters at Kent State, Ohio, on May 4, 1970; who knows about the events ten days later, on May 14, at Jackson State University, Mississippi? Kareem:

On May 14th, 10 days after Kent State ignited the nation, at the predominantly black Jackson State University in Mississippi, police killed two black students (one a high school senior, the other the father of an 18-month-old baby) with shotguns and wounded twelve others.

There was no national outcry. The nation was not mobilized to do anything. That heartless leviathan we call History swallowed that event whole, erasing it from the national memory.

Past Wingnuttery

Click here for "A Brief History of Wingnuts in America; From George Washington to Woodstock," an article at Daily Beast by John Avlon, part of the latest update of his book, "Wingnuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama." Even the presidents considered by historians to be the best -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- had their over-the-top detractors. Avlon says:

American political history has been marked by periodic eruptions of the “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that Richard Hofstadter famously characterized as “the paranoid style in American politics.” Wingnuts have masqueraded under different names and causes at different times, but they have always been committed to an “us against them” framing of domestic debates while inflaming group hatred in the name of politics and alleged principle. They prey on fear and ignorance.

Survey Wingnut rhetoric through the ages and the usual suspects keep surfacing: appeals to religious suspicion; ethnic and racial divisions; foreign subversion of sovereignty; and perhaps the oldest conspiracy theory of them all—accusing the president of the United States of being a tyrant and a dictator bent on destroying the Constitution.

Deliberate Destruction Of Congress's Effectiveness

Click here for an article at Washington Monthly entitled "The Big Lobotomy: How Republicans Made Congress Stupid," by Paul Glastris and Haley Sweetland Edwards. It's a long one, but well worth the read.

It describes how, since Newt Gingrich's congressional revolution, congressional staff have been experiencing "brain drain": Conservatives under Gingrich and in the years since have drastically cut funding for, and numbers of, congressional staffers who accomplish the day-to-day work done in Washington.

A quick refresher: In 1995, after winning a majority in the House for the first time in forty years, one of the first things the new Republican House leadership did was gut Congress’s workforce. They cut the “professional staff” (the lawyers, economists, and investigators who work for committees rather than individual members) by a third. They reduced the “legislative support staff” (the auditors, analysts, and subject-matter experts at the Government Accountability Office [GAO], the Congressional Research Service [CRS], and so on) by a third, too, and killed off the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entirely. And they fundamentally dismantled the old committee structure, centralizing power in the House speaker’s office and discouraging members and their staff from performing their own policy research.

And:

Today, the GAO and the CRS, which serve both House and Senate, are each operating at about 80 percent of their 1979 capacity. While Senate committee staffs have rebounded somewhat under Democratic control, every single House standing committee had fewer staffers in 2009 than in 1994. Since 2011, with a Tea Party-radicalized GOP back in control of the House, Congress has cut its budget by a whopping 20 percent, a far higher ratio than any other federal agency, leading, predictably, to staff layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, and drooping morale.

Later, the article says:

When Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House in the fall of 1994, he set about almost immediately creating “the most controversial majority leadership since 1910,” according to longtime Congress watchers and political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein in their 2006 book, The Broken Branch. Under his leadership, backed up by seventy-three conservative Republican freshmen who swept to power that year, the goal was not to reform, but to destroy; not to compromise, but to advance a highly conservative agenda no matter the means. The shift in culture was palpable almost immediately, with freshman lawmakers eschewing bipartisan freshman orientations in favor of partisan ones, and the vast majority joining what’s known as the “Tuesday-Thursday Club,” flying in on Tuesday evening and out Thursday afternoon so as to reduce the likelihood of contracting “Potomac fever.” “There was a total contempt for the institution,” said Scott Lilly, who served as a high-level staffer in Congress for thirty-one years before joining the Center for American Progress in 2004. John Dingell, who will have served in the House for fifty-nine years when he retires this year, said it succinctly: “The place just got meaner.”

Gingrich’s strategy, as he explained it to Mann and Ornstein, was simple: Cultivate a seething disdain for the institution of Congress itself, while simultaneously restructuring it so as to eliminate anything—powerful chairmen, contradictory facts from legislative support agencies, more moderate Republicans—that would stand in the way of his vision.

In conclusion, the article says:

Regardless of how it’s organized or what new technologies can be brought to bear, what’s clear is that members of Congress need the institutional capacity to help them make sense of it all. As the issues facing members of Congress become increasingly intertwined and technological in our complex global economy, what we need is not fewer people in government who understand the implications of, say, the international derivatives market; what we need is more. And we need them, whether they be knowledgeable committee chairs or long-serving professional staff, to be experienced, well paid, and appreciated so they want to stick around for a while.

The problem, however, is that conservatives as a rule don’t see this lack of expertise as a problem. Quite the contrary: they’ve orchestrated the brain drain precisely as a way to advance the conservative agenda. Why, when your aim is less government, would you want to add to government’s intellectual capacity?

The answer, as some conservatives are beginning to realize, is that making Congress dumber has not, in fact, made government smaller. As the conservative but independent-minded Senator Tom Coburn wrote in his 2012 report, cuts to the GAO budget and declines in Senate and House committee oversight activity have resulted in billions of dollars in unnecessary, duplicative, and wasteful government spending.

Disposable Email Address

Click here for Bob Rankin's article, "Do You Need A Disposable Email Address?"

Yes, I do, because Microsoft is doing its best to drive me away from using outlook.com by some ridiculous "verification" nonsense that forces me to jump through a series of hoops once a month or more just to access my own account.

Tea Partier Beseeches God's Help -- Against Establishment Republicans

Click here for an article at Salon by Elias Isquith entitled "Tea Party leader asks God to 'be violent against' GOP establishment in opening prayer." Mississippi Tea Party chairman Roy Nicholson delivered an opening prayer at a rally in Flowood, Mississippi, in which he asked Almighty God to "be violent against” establishment Republicans:

We ask for your blessing upon the conservatives in this state, that they might stand strong and firm. Father, we even ask for you to bless our enemies, and Lord they are truly our enemies that head the Republican Party and the whole political establishment.

We’re asking, Father, for two things. We’re asking, Father, that you would expose them, set division amongst them, set them one against another, bring confusion and fear into their camp, into their thinking, for the purpose of pulling them down, for casting them down out of their high offices and reducing them, Lord, to having no power in this state. So, Lord, that you might raise up and seek the righteous in the positions of power that this state might once more be a state that honors you in all that it does.

Father, we’re asking that in all of the tribulations were asking you to bring upon them, that it would work change in their heart — that you would use it to bring true Godly sorrow, that they might truly repent for their iniquity and their wickedness, for that they would be restored to you, that you would have honor in the state of Mississippi for the great works that you’ve done in correcting and purifying the government and rescuing and saving the worst of us.

That's his appeal for the Almighty's help in dealing with establishment Republicans -- how would he word an address referring to progressive Democrats, I wonder?

Anyway: "... expose them, set division amongst them, set them one against another, bring confusion and fear into their camp, into their thinking, for the purpose of pulling them down, for casting them down out of their high offices and reducing them, Lord, to having no power in this state." Thy will be done.

Tea Party Losing The Battle? Maybe Not ...

Click here for Digby's article at Salon entitled "Tea Party’s horrifying cousin: Here comes 'constitutional conservatism,'” subtitled "The sad club of dupes known as the Tea Party is not the real problem. This scary ideological undercurrent might be."

She quotes Ed Kilgore at Talking Points Memo:

Yesterday’s winner Pat Roberts, who already sported lifetime ratings of 86 percent from both the American Conservative Union and Americans for Prosperity, went far out of his way to propitiate the ideological gods of movement conservatism as he fought for reelection. He voted against an appropriations measure that included a project he had long sought for his alma mater, Kansas State University, and opposed a UN Treaty banning discrimination against people with disabilities over the objections of his revered Kansas Senate predecessors Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum.

Kilgore also pointed out in his blog at Washington Monthly on the eve of the Obama/Romney election:

Yes, years from now conservatives will sit around campfires and sing songs about the legendary internecine battles of late 2012, when father fought son and brother fought brother across a chasm of controversy as to whether 98% or 99% of abortions should be banned; whether undocumented workers should be branded and utilized as “guest workers,” loaded onto cattle cars and shipped home, or simply immiserated; whether the New Deal/Great Society programs should be abolished in order to cut upper-income taxes or abolished in order to boost Pentagon spending. There’s also a vicious, take-no-prisons fight over how quickly to return the role of the federal government in the economy to its pre-1930s role as handmaiden to industry. Blood will flow in the streets as Republicans battle over how to deal with health care after Obamacare is repealed and 50 million or people lose health insurance. Tax credits and risk pools or just “personal responsibility?”

In short, there's no cause for liberals to be jubilant at the apparent rout of the tea party crowd in the 2014 primaries; they've won by pushing Republican mainstream political thought so far to the right it cannot possibly be called moderate.

Double Dutch!

Remember the skipping game, Double Dutch, with two ropes? Have a look at this one!

Free College Textbooks (And Courses)

Click here for a post by Bob Rankin on free college textbooks; there are also links to free college courses.

Fancy Farm Picnic In Kentucky

Alison Lundergan-Grimes, the Kentucky Secretary of State who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat (which he has held for 30 years), had some red meat for the raucous Republican crowd at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic. (My favorite of her zingers: "If Mitch McConnell were a TV show, he'd be Mad Men -– treating women unfairly, stuck in 1968, and ending this season."

In the 2010 census, it was determined that Fancy Farm, Kentucky, had a population of 458. But since 1880, once a year -- and particularly in election years -- this tiny community has some political clout, as it hosts a crowd of up to 15,000 people for the annual Fancy Farm Picnic. Ever since the 1930s, the Fancy Farm Picnic has been traditionally a venue for Kentucky politicians to show up and make political speeches. It's pretty much required that candidates for political office in Kentucky show up at Fancy Farm -- when Senator Jim Bunning didn't, in 2007, he took a lot of political heat for it. Watch Lundergan-Grimes vs. McConnell, 2014:

USAID - A Chilling View

Click here for an article by Mark Ames at pando.com entitled "The murderous history of USAID, the US Government agency behind Cuba’s fake Twitter clone."

Click here for the Wikipedia entry for USAID, described as "... the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid," an organization I have always taken to be pretty benevolent, administering useful aid programs around the world. I was once involved in an arbitration concerning a USAID project in Egypt which involved the expenditure of several hundred million dollars in the development of an irrigation project. the article quotes Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research as saying:

In a number of countries, including Venezuela and Bolivia, USAID is acting more as an agency involved in covert action, like the CIA, than as an aid or development agency.

While Ames says:

It’s important to note that not everything USAID does is patently evil — in fact, there are many programs that could even be described as good.

He also says:

But USAID, as with any agency of American power, is fully capable of and will continue to be an instrument of geopolitical and corporate force.

There's some pretty ugly stuff in this article. See more after the break.

Michael Peroutka, GOP candidate for county council in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, speaking at the 2012 national conference for the League of the South, gives a speech about reinvigorating the culture with a biblical understanding of law and government, and invites the crowd to stand and join in as he plays "the national anthem" on guitar:

George Washington On Torture And Abuse Of Prisoners Of War

George Washington on the subject of the abuse and torture of prisoners captured by his army:

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”

- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Women's 600 Meters - Inspirational

Heather Dorniden, women's 600-meter race, 2008 Big 10 Indoor Track Championships. The race is three laps of a 200-meter track. She's second most of the way but takes a slight lead after the second lap. Keep your eye on number 170, in black and yellow.

Obama's Trip To India - $200 Million A Day! (And Rachel Maddow Is A Vampire!)

It's true! It's on the Internet!

I'd forgotten about this; it's an oldie but a goodie.

Ring Of Fire, A Cappella

By the a cappella group, Home Free:

Colbert "Hijacks" Palin's New TV Channel Website

Sarah Palin has started a new TV channel with an associated website, sarahpalinchannel.com. Unfortunately for her, she didn't buy associated domain names such as thesarahpalinchannel.com -- which was bought by Stephen Colbert.

At Colbert's site, you find that the site bills itself as: "The only Sarah Palin Channel on the internet with a definite article in the address!" It invites you to "Check out today's exclusive content!" -- a link which takes you to a collection of clips of Colbert's many satires of Palin.

Here's how he covered it:

"I have always been a huge fan of Sarah Palin. She's a strong leader with a proven history of selflessness. I mean, in the midst of her 2008 campaign, she took the time to help out a struggling senior with severely impaired judgment."

Sarah Palin Is Just Amazing!

She's the best thing that ever happened to American politics! Don't think so? Listen to her introduction from this guy (but you may not want to hear Palin's actual speech):

Bob Rankin, Dropbox Plus

Click here for Bob Rankin's article on advanced uses for Dropbox.

Taxes Will Keep Democracy On The March! (1943)

Once upon a time, it was considered patriotic to pay your taxes, as shown in this Donald Duck film clip from 1943, "The Spirit of '43," in which Donald is torn between the "thrifty" and the "spendthrift" aspects of his personality. Spend, for the Axis -- or save, for taxes? Guns, guns, all kind of guns -- to blast the aggressors from the seas! Taxes -- to bury the Axis! Economizing during wartime was the rule until Bush accompanied his invasion of Iraq with enormous tax cuts -- and an exhortation to celebrate freedom by continuing the great American pastime of shopping!

New Rule: Stop The Search For ET

New Rule: Creationist Ken Ham, who runs the Creation Museum and said this week that we should call off the search for extraterrestrial life because aliens haven't heard the word of Jesus, and thus are going to hell anyway, must listen to this alternative point of view from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson ...

The Simpsons: Seamus Romney

Republican campaign commercial, 2012:

Paul Ryan's Compassion For The Poors

Click here for an article by xaxnar at Daily Kos entitled "Paul Ryan Poverty Scam Eviscerated."

Paul Ryan, who was the beneficiary of generous social programs when, as a child, the death of his father left his family in difficult circumstances, and who then, once he had become successful, quickly pulled up the ladder behind him, is attempting to portray Republicans as being gravely concerned with the plight of the poor (also known as the 47%, or the looters and moochers).

The article cites Paul Krugman (Krugtron the Invincible!) as follows:

...and what the whole Beltway media crowd has done – is to slot Ryan into a role someone is supposed to be playing in their political play, that of the thoughtful, serious conservative wonk. In reality, Ryan is nothing like that; he’s a hard-core conservative, with a voting record as far right as Michelle Bachman’s, who has shown no competence at all on the numbers thing.

What Ryan is good at is exploiting the willful gullibility of the Beltway media, using a soft-focus style to play into their desire to have a conservative wonk they can say nice things about. And apparently the trick still works.

The Krugman quote is from 2012, and is still golden today.

Rule By The Elites

Click here for an article by Tim Donovan at AlterNet entitled "Clueless Rich Kids on the Rise: How Millennial Aristocrats Will Destroy Our Future."

The article is about the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and mostly the spiralling trend of inherited wealth. It refers to a recent survey:

The survey, which polled 680 Americans holding at least $3 million in investable assets, unearthed a troubling trend — the birth of a new American aristocracy. As the survey notes, “Nearly three-quarters of those over 69, and 61% of Baby Boomers, were the first generation to accumulate significant wealth. Among the younger Millennial generation, inherited wealth is more common. About two-thirds are from families in which they are the second, third or fourth generation to be wealthy.”

Click here for an article by Luisa Kroll in Forbes entitled "America's Richest Families: 185 Clans With Billion Dollar Fortunes."

The top three are the Walton family (Wal-Mart), with $165 billion; the Koch family (Koch Industries), with $89 billion; and the Mars family, with $60 billion -- Mars bars, Snickers, M&Ms, but also Uncle Ben's rice and pet food brands Pedigree and Whiskas.

But what about the concentration of political power in family dynasties? George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988; his son, George W. Bush, was president from 2000 to 2008. Bill Clinton was president from 1992 to 2000; his wife, Hillary, is the frontrunner in the race for the presidency in 2016. If she were to be elected and serve two terms, that would mean that the U.S. presidency would have been controlled by members of just two families for 28 years out of 36 (Barack Obama's eight years being the lone outsider intrusion). But let's not forget that brother Jeb Bush has been -- and may be again -- a prominent Republican candidate for 2016. If he can fight off Tea Party attacks, the choice in 2016 may be: Clinton or Bush?

If Hillary or Jeb should be elected in 2016 and serve two terms, what would be the prospects in 2024? Well, by then perhaps the country will be ready for Jeb's son (and W.'s nephew), George Prescott Bush, who recently won an easy victory (75/25) in the Republican primary for the office of Texas land commissioner, and who is strongly favored (in deep red Texas) to defeat his Democrat opponent in November. Or how about Chelsea Clinton? She's active in the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative; with degrees from Stanford (Highest Honors and a B.A. in history), Oxford (Ph.D. in International Relations), and Columbia (Master in Public Health), she sits on a number of boards of corporations and foundations, and has worked at NBC since November 2011. She was born when her father was Governor of Arkansas, and she moved into the White House for eight years at the age of 12; a political future, perhaps?

That's just the Bushes and the Clintons, but there are a number of other prominent American political families.

Al Gore, Clinton's vice-president and winner of the popular vote for the presidency in 2000, spent 16 years in the U.S. Congress and the Tennessee Senate, and he's the son of U.S. Senator Al Gore Sr.

Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachussets and Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012, is the son of George Romney, who was chairman of American Motors, Governor of Michigan, and initially a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in 1968.

Rand Paul (Aqua Buddah), Tea Party darling and Senator from Kentucky, was elected in the Republican wave of 2010, and is a potential candidate (in some polls considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination) in 2016. His father, Ron Paul, was a Texas congressman for 23 years, and ran for president three times.

Jason Carter, a Georgia State Senator, is running for Governor in November; his grandfather is James Earl Carter, better known as Jimmy, U.S. President 39. Michelle Nunn, daughter of the influential Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, is running for the U.S. Senate. Andrew Cuomo is Governor of New York, the position his father, Mario Cuomo, held for three terms, and he is often the subject of speculation about a position in federal politics.

The name "Landrieu" is a prominent one in Louisiana. For eight years, Moon Landrieu was mayor of New Orleans, a position now held by his son Mitch; Mitch's sister Mary is U.S. Senator from Louisiana. Mark Begich, Senator from Alaska, is the son of Nick Begich, who died in a plane crash after serving in the U.S. Senate for eight years -- and who then defeated his opponent, 56/44, in the next election -- posthumously!

Speaking of American political dynasties, has anyone heard the name "Kennedy"?

Under The Right-Wing Rock (Shower After Reading)

Click here for a Digby post at Hullabaloo entitled "Kooky Extremist Cartoon." She says:

After I googled this silly story to get a sense of what this cartoon is I found that it's a series of episodes that are carried all over the internet on Tea party and libertarian web sites. It's a fascinating amalgam of right wing conspiracy theories, libertarian myth and conservative shibboleth. I think it may be the most accurate representation of the ideologically confused, hysterical right I've ever seen.

Further:

There are three "seasons" of this thing, more than any normal person could ever watch in a sitting. And perhaps the most hilarious thing about it is the fact that it bills itself this way:

Conrad the Constitution. Web series that follows Conrad, the living breathing U.S. Constitution.

I'm going to guess they're unaware that the concept of a "living" Constitution is the hallmark of liberal jurisprudence.

Here's another right-wing blog's explanation of the cartoon:

"Tim Fox is a graduate of San Diego State University where he studied film and television production. Having worked on many projects since graduation, Tim has focused his talents on exposing the errors in American politics today. Tim, along with his older brother Jay, are the creators of a new animated web series called Conrad the constitution. The series follows Conrad, the friendly constitution next door, as he guards his amendments from frequent molestation;in Washington DC. Meant to educate and entertain its audience, Conrad pulls no punches, and leaves no stone unturned.

Not surprisingly, Tim Fox received a visit from the Secret Service. The editors of a sympathetic blog, 21stcenturywire.com, put it this way:

The episode in question depicts the cartoon character, Conrad the Constitution (image, left), after passing out on paint fumes, falls in a dream sequence where he traveled six years into the future only to discover an America in tatters and under Marshal Law [sic] – with Obama still in the White House. Conrad then engineers a plan to set the nation free from dictatorship by assassinating the President. When Conrad finally awakens from his nightmare, he realises it was just a dream after being brought around by friend Ron Paul.

After the break, see the complete comment section from that site -- warning: It isn't pretty -- and the animated video itself.

Tyranny!

Jose Antonio Fernandez was given two minutes to address a public meeting of the Miami-Dade County Commission, and he didn't do himself any favors. He ran a plant nursery, and in 2011 was ordered to pay $316,000 in restitution for environmental damage he had caused to wetlands. He hadn't paid any of it, and his house was being seized to help pay. From Wonkette:

And so Fernandez showed up at the commission meeting in his best “No to United Nations Agenda 21″ T-shirt and let the commissioners know that he was not going to stand for being treated like a victim of Castro’s Cuba.

“I dare you to sell my house,” Fernandez told commissioners Tuesday. “You have become tyrants. You have become a corrupted government. You have destroyed my family. And hundreds of families. And I said: enough. I am the people. And the time that you sell the house, my constitution gives me the right to shoot every one of you,” he concluded, pointing at the dais. “Shoot ’em.”

However, things have degenerated to such a state of tyranny in Obama's America that he was arrested and is being held on 13 felony counts for threatening public servants. Video below:

Playful Platypus

I Miss Keith Olbermann

Whatever became of Keith Olbermann? Here's a vintage clip:

A Rational Argument From The Right (?)

Jim Gilchrist, right-winger extraordinaire, compares a southern border fence to the D-Day landings. He's a cofounder of the Minuteman Project, and he wants "another major, massive assembly of minutemen and women along the entire border -- not just the Arizona border this time, but the entire 2,000-mile border from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas. I would need 3,500 volunteers to spend 30 days in certain areas, the unprotected areas, along that 2,000-mile border."

By all means, we must defend ourselves against those brown people trying to cross the desert and ford the rivers to join this wonderful free nation, because they'll destroy America as we know it. (He acknowledges that there'll be a 2% cohort of crazies they'll have to deal with; nice call, Jim, but maybe your estimate is a tad low.)

All this is presented on a "news" channel, "The Daily Ledger," the money-making brainchild of a Southern California newscaster named Graham Ledger. He (Ledger) helps along the interview with comments such as "Just to be clear, for detractors, you're not vigilantes, you're not down there to spur on violence; you're down there as red-white-and-blue Americans to try and plug a hole in a sinking ship. Correct?"

Why yes, that is correct, Graham, and furthermore, liberty and freedom.

Ledger: Yadda yadda yadda, complete violation of our sovereignty, lawlessness.

Gilchrist: "Yes that's the conduct du jour of America, a nation that -- well, once, not so long ago, was heralded as a nation governed by the rule of law. It is now a nation that in short order will be governed by mob rule."

Oh, noes. Please save us from the brown hordes, the nannies and gardeners who threaten the existence of our nation.




Click here for a great article in more depth on this subject by David Niewert.

Rick Santorum On Contraception (Hint: It's Bad!)

Santorum (runner-up to Romney in the 2012 Republican primaries):

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before [hey, Rick, you're not president quite yet] is what I think is the danger of contraception. The whole sexual libertine idea that many in the Christian faith have said, well, it's ok, contraception's ok. But it's not ok.

It's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. It is supposed to be within marriage. It is supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal and also unitive but also procreative and that's the perfect way that sexual union should happen. When you take any part of that out, we diminish the act.

If you can take one part out, if it's not for the purpose of procreation, that's not one of the reasons you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So why can't you take other parts of it out? It becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure...

I'm not runnning for preacher, I'm not running for pastor. But these are important public policy issues. These have profound impact on the health of our society. I'm not talking about moral health, although clearly moral health, but I'm talking economic health, I'm talking about out of wedlock birth rates, sexually transmitted diseases.

These are profound issues that we only like to talk about from a scientific point of view. Well that's one point of view, but we also need to have the courage to talk about the moral aspects of it and the purpose and rationale for why we do what we do.

Lee Atwater Speaks: The Southern Strategy

According to Wikipedia: "Harvey LeRoy 'Lee' Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American political consultant and strategist to the Republican Party. He was an advisor to U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee."

Atwater was one of the first ruthless, take-no-prisoners Republican consultants who have done so much to poison political discourse. His "dirty tricks" in Republican political campaigns are legendary. He became a protege to Republican mastermind Ed Rollins, who says Atwater ran a dirty tricks operation against Democratic vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, including publicizing the fact that Ferraro's parents had been indicted on numbers running in the 1940s. Rollins also described Atwater as "ruthless," "Ollie North in civilian clothes," and someone who "just had to drive in one more stake."

As a prelude to the audio clip that follows, Wikipedia claims the interview began:

"Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

"Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?"

And the Atwater audio follows, with a transcript beneath. In the video, the captioning starts out: "In 1981, the legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater was working in Ronald Reagan's White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis."

The second frame says: "In this audio, made public for the first time ever, Atwater lays out how the Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves."



TRANSCRIPT:

"Here's how I would approach that issue as a -- as a statistician or a political scientist -- or, no, as a psychologist, which I'm not, is -- is how abstract you -- you handle the race thing. In other words, you start out -- and now y'all aren't quoting me on this, are you?

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968, you can’t say 'nigger'; that hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like 'forced busing,' 'states’ rights,' and all that stuff. And you’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all of these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously, maybe that is part of it; I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we're -- we're doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me? Because obviously sitting around saying 'We want to cut taxes,' 'We want to cut this,' and 'We want' -- is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger.' You know.

"So any way you look at it, race is coming on the back burner."

Atwater is believed to have repented of his political sins on his deathbed before succumbing to cancer; others say he was being disingenuous, "spinning to the end."

Interesting guy. May he rest in -- whatever state he deserves.

Krugman Hits It Out Of The Park - Again

Click here for Elias Isquith's coverage at Salon -- entitled 'Paul Krugman blasts the GOP’s plutocratic “charlatans and cranks'” -- of Krugman's NYT article. Krugman kicks butt and takes names -- one name being charlatan and crank Art Laffer, a huge purveyor since the Reagan days of junk economics and trickle-down theory, the proponent of the totally discredited Laffer Curve -- see the Wikipedia article here.

Base Jumping (Slow Motion)

Words Of Wisdom From Sarah Palin

Taken from Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods (h/t, Charlie Pierce, Esquire) on Fox News, lamenting Sen. Thad Cochran's win in the Mississippi Republican primary over neoconfederate Chris McDaniel:

"We're going to be a bankrupt, fundamentally transformed country unless those who know what they're doing, and aren't going along just to get along with those in power, it being today the Democrats."

Well, you can't argue with that. Or as Charlie says, "The language of Shakespeare, ladies and gentlemen."

Ted Cruz (ex-Canadian)

Click here for a nine-page article in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin entitled "The Absolutist." Elias Isquith of Salon's comment on the article: "The clear takeaway: All that red meat he throws to the GOP base? He means every word."

Cruz was outstanding on debate teams at Princeton and Harvard, and soon became one of the best appellate lawyers in Texas. The skills of an appellate lawyer are different from those of a trial lawyer, who must constantly be open to negotiations and plea bargains. At the appellate level, there is no room left for bargaining: All that is left is to state your case in the strongest, most effective way possible. That appellate-level approach carries over to his politics. He does not negotiate. He is inflexible. It must be his way, all or nothing.

Here (in bold) are the subheadings in Isquith's Salon article:

He thinks Republican presidential candidates lose because they’re insufficiently right-wing.

“It is amazing that the wisdom of the chattering class to the Republicans is always, always, always ‘Surrender your principles and agree with the Democrats,’” he told me. “That’s been true for my entire lifetime. The chattering classes have consistently said, ‘You crazy Republicans have to give up on what you believe and become more like Democrats.’ And, I would note, every time Republicans do that we lose.”

He thinks last year’s government shutdown went just swell.

“Many voices in Washington say the fight that we had last fall was not successful,” Cruz told me. “Like any good litigator, at times you think of a battle as a long-term battle. You don’t always accomplish everything in the first skirmish. As a consequence of millions of people last summer and fall getting engaged in that battle, I believe we dramatically elevated the national debate over the harms of Obamacare. And today Democrats are running scared, and the prevailing wisdom is Republicans are quite likely to win control of the Senate because of Obamacare.”

He was nurtured by the conservative movement from a young age.

When Cruz was in his early teens, in Houston, his parents enrolled him in an after-school program run by Rolland Storey, a retired energy executive who wanted to instill the values of the free market in young people. At the Free Enterprise Institute, Storey had his young charges read Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and other authors revered by conservatives, and then give speeches at Rotary Clubs and similar venues around the state.

“Ted was just an amazing speaker at fourteen, by far the most impressive student we ever had,” Winston Elliott III, who became affiliated with Storey’s organization when Cruz was a student and now serves as its president, told me.

When he was young, his father, Rafael — a pastor and Cuban émigré — would warn him that then-President Jimmy Carter was like Fidel Castro.

“It all started for us in 1980, when Ted was nine years old,” Rafael Cruz told me. “I was involved with a group called the Religious Roundtable, which was working with the Moral Majority to help mobilize Christians to elect Ronald Reagan. All during that year, we talked every night about how important it was to get rid of this socialist-leftist President Carter and replace him with a constitutional conservative, Ronald Reagan. I must have told Ted a dozen times, ‘When I was in Cuba and they took away our freedoms, I had a place to go. If we lose our freedoms here, where are we going to go?’”

He adores the Federalist Society, a group of conservatives dedicated toward promoting a strongly conservative reading of the Constitution, and considers it his “home."

Founded in 1982, the society is a forum for discussion of conservative legal ideas. It takes no formal positions on issues, and members don’t agree with each other on every topic, but it has long operated as the network for potential Republican judicial nominees and executive-branch officials. In practice, the Federalist approach has meant an “originalist” view of the Constitution, which, in turn, reflects the priorities of the modern Republican Party—including an expansive view of an individual’s right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, a rejection of constitutional protections for a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, a porous barrier between church and state, and a narrow conception of the power of the federal government to intervene in the economy.

Apparently he's not a charlatan pandering to the rubes: He's the real deal. Scary thought.

Both Sides Do It -- NOT!

Click here for an article in the National Journal by the estimable Norm Ornstein entitled Setting the Record Straight on a Polarizing Debate." According to Wikipedia, Ornstein is "a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a [conservative] Washington D.C. think tank. He was the co-writer (along with Thomas E. Mann) of It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism." Here's a quote from that article in "Both Sides Are Not To Blame" at Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

"Does it matter whether the polarization, and the deep dysfunction that follows from it, is equal or not, including to the average voter? The answer is a resounding yes. If bad behavior--using the nation's full faith and credit as a hostage to political demands, shutting down the government, attempting to undermine policies that have been lawfully enacted, blocking nominees not on the basis of their qualifications but to nullify the policies they would pursue, using filibusters as weapons of mass obstruction--is to be discouraged or abandoned, those who engage in it have to be held accountable.

"Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem."

Here's neocon cheerleader Ron Fournier's take on the "both sides" situation:

“This is my fundamental disagreement with partisan journalists and political scientists who dedicate their careers to measuring increments of fault—the GOP’s share of blame is 20 percent or 60 percent or 80 percent. Who cares? Not the average voter who merely wants her leaders to work together and get results.”

Ornstein gives an illustrative citation from a Pew Research Center survey:

82 percent of consistent liberals say they believe in compromise, compared with 32 percent of consistent conservatives.

More Music: Time Of Your Life (Green Day)

The only time I ever heard this song (I'm not a radio guy) was on the finale of Seinfeld, with its joyful montage of shots celebrating the highlights of the series. I didn't realize the Green Day song was about a breakup, and the true title is Good Riddance:

Go Your Own Way!

According to Dr. J at Daily Kos, Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" was written by Lindsey Buckingham and about the breakup of his relationship with Stevie Nicks: "It's interesting to watch the looks both shoot at each other when this is performed in concert."





You can understand the emotion they're putting into it.

An Iraq War Refresher

Well, the neocons who engineered the Iraq disaster are all over the media; John McCain is claiming that the Bush team won the war and Obama lost it. He's advising Obama to ditch his entire foreign affairs team and replace them with "people who know how to win" (I guess he means Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wofowitz, Feith, and the rest of W's insane clown posse.)


Click here for a link to 10 Lessons from Bush's Fiasco in Iraq by John Perr at Daily Kos.

Cantor's Resignation (The Onion)

The following article, entitled "Resigning House Leader Cantor Reflects On All The Accomplishments He Thwarted," is from The Onion:

WASHINGTON—Looking back on his 13-year tenure in the House of Representatives with reverence, resigning House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) reflected on the long list of accomplishments he had thwarted during his time in office, sources confirmed Thursday. “From obstructing a jobs bill to put Americans back to work in 2011, to derailing gun control measures any time they reached my desk, I feel blessed to have had such an incredible run of preventing productive policies, and even a few pieces of landmark legislation, from ever passing,” said Cantor, explaining that as a young man, he “never would have dreamed” that some day he would be in a position to hinder the entire American lawmaking process and completely neuter dozens of bills. “Of course, I’m disappointed because I thought I had many more years of impeding accomplishments ahead of me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I never quite managed to stall environmental policies as much as I would have liked. But at the end of the day, I’m very proud of how I helped Congress accomplish so little during my time in office.” Cantor added that he took solace that his legacy of hampering federal policy was secure, and trusted that “many, many more” in his party would be inspired to follow in his footsteps.

Send Text Messages For Free

Click here for a link to a post from Bob Rankin,

"Deserter Storm" - Stewart Kills Fox

Stewart hits it out of the park with this devastating takedown of Fox's savage attack on returned POW Bowe Bergdahl and his father. (I thought the Jiminy Cricket portion was uncalled for, but ...)


Jon Stewart 060914 by lookatmyshirt

I don't know who to credit with this -- Crooks & Liars? -- but I saw someone who said that Fox's approach was "Let's not jump to conclusions; let's wait until all of the facts are distorted."

The Canonization Of St. Ronald Of Reagan

The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project was hatched in the spring of 1997 and launched by Grover Norquist's merry band of conservative radicals. Click here for the story.

Joseph Stiglitz With Bill Moyers: Fair Taxes

Bobby Kennedy On The Importance Of GDP

"Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Web Privacy

Click here for a Bob Rankin article about web secrecy; especially the use of Tor to keep your Internet activity private.

Dylan At Newport Festival, 1964

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man:

Sinister Genius ...

Click here for an excellent article by Hunter at Daily Kos entitled "How Karl Rove, Rich Lowry and Politico are damaging America."

In short, the execrable Karl Rove lies, and says that those lies cast doubt on Hillary's fitness to be president. The execrable Politico gives the execrable Rich Lowry a platform to say that if you disregard the lies, Rove's underlying point -- Hillary may be unfit to be president -- is a good one that deserves honest debate.

The correct response? "Karl, you are telling obvious lies, easily debunked; your argument is without merit, unworthy of public debate."

But no, now that the question has been raised, "debate" has actually begun; Fox News and others chime in to amplify what Rove and Lowry have said. So Rove's lies have created a "debate" on Hillary's fitness to be president -- and the right-wing position in the "debate" is premised on lies. Nevertheless, the nattering nabobs of negativism bring the debate to a crescendo. In the words of that silver-tongued orator George W. Bush: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

So blatant lies prompt earnest discussion among the pundits. Hunter says:

And this is how it works, chapter and verse. The professional liar pipes up with a bald-faced lie. Though it is quickly and easily disproven, other professional liars pipe up to say that if we ignore the fact that the liar is lying, the liar raises a good point. The liars take to the op-ed pages to note that the liar is just asking the question, and now the question is out there. And they will make damn sure the question is out there for as long as it takes to get a flock of morons and dunderheads to believe that there is a conspiracy to not answer the question, even though "the question" was a lie to begin with and no less a lie through each of the various iterations meant to sanitize it enough for the public to forget that the whole thing was a fiction from the start.

He concludes:

This is how it works, and this is why we are now a nation that sees the ghosts of conspiracy in every corner. This is why there is a Bundy ranch standoff, and why Benghazi! will get more hearings than all other attacks on American diplomatic outposts combined, and why climate change will continue to be disputed even as large parts of Antarctica cave off into the rising seas. This is why we fought a war in Iraq, and why those that peddled it have faced no professional repercussions. Because we continue to treat truth and ideologically laced falsehood with exactly equal merit, as if they are two equally worthy opponents for our attention and our respect, and govern ourselves with notions taken just as liberally from the falsehoods as from the facts.

This attitude permeates public discussion. A widely accepted figure is that 97% of publications in peer-reviewed scientific papers support the position that significant harmful climate-changing effects are man-made. No matter; right-wing politicians, bereft of scientific knowledge, their wallets stuffed with petrodollars, loudly trumpet a contrary view based on ... nothing. An overwhelming body of scientific evidence shows that dinosaurs first appeared 230 million years ago and ruled the earth for 135 million years; Christian fundamentalists thunder from their pulpits that the earth is 6,000 years old, a belief based on ... faith in the Bible. Rather than dismiss these radical, baseless views, pundits "evenhandedly" give them equal space in public discussion.

Such is the state of American journalism today.

UPDATE: Here's a segment I transcribed from a Fox News clip on Crooks & Liars. I don't know the names of the Foxers, but they're clearly quite happy with the situation:

FOXER 1: Michelle, of course Hillary Clinton's health and her age are fair game, like anybody who runs for president, if indeed she does that. But did Rove go further than that, and did he overstate the case?

FOXER 2: It's what he does. And I think there is a certain sinister genius to it. He'll get a lot of blowback now, but the issue will be out there, and people will focus on it, and they'll forget why they even brought it up to begin with. And as we go along, it will be in there, and people will discuss this -- a lot.

FOXER 3: I couldn't agree more with you, Michelle. Because what they did was they floated -- he floated a trial balloon for political coverage for 2016 elections, and even though that balloon was being shot down by liberals, it's still -- the issue is still being talked about. Politico, on the day that this happened, had eight different stories talking about this. And I checked, and MSNBC, as of Thursday night, in its prime time schedule, was still talking about it on four of the five shows.

I rest my case.

Operation American Spring - Comedy Gold

Such an easy target for mockery, but just irresistible. Click here for an article entitled "35 Top Excuses for What Happened to the 29,999,000 People Who Didn’t Show Up for Operation American Spring," by Dan Simpson. (The "leader" of OAS, a nutbar ex-officer, Col. Riley, apparently didn't show up; one suggestion was that he was home burgling the houses of the people who came.)

Here are the top 35 excuses for the missing 29,999,000 freedom-loving patriots who were nowhere to be found today.

1. President Obama ordered FEMA to round them up and put them all in concentration camps.

2. President Obama declared martial law and ordered them to be herded and executed.

3. BENGHAZI!

4. It’s meth-cooking season, so couldn’t leave their meth labs.

5. They all went to Washington state, instead of Washington D.C.

6. They used Apple Maps and ended up protesting in a corn field in Iowa.

7. They couldn’t figure out a way to get there without using a government-built road.

8. Cliven Bundy’s cattle was blocking the roadways.

9. It was national discount day at Golden Corral.

10. There were too many puddles to navigate around.

11. The 15 or so big rig drivers who showed up for Truckers for Truth back in October are still clogging up the interstates in the area.

12. They tried to make signs to bring to the protest, but couldn’t get all the words spelled right in time to show up.

13. They were all looking for that Ben Ghazi fella they always hear about on Fox News.

14. They found out that neither Ted Cruz nor Sarah Palin would be there, and didn’t bother.

15. COPS was being filmed in their trailer park that day and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to be on television.

16. There was a Duck Dynasty marathon on A & E all day.

17. They couldn’t get their tractors started.

18. They couldn’t miss their weekly KKK meeting.

19. Same reason why every other previous battle for freedom and liberty was halted – it rained.

20. Saw a rainbow over Washington, and turned around, thinking that getting near it might make them gay.

21. They were given ultimatums by their cousins that they’d break up with them if they left for a day or two.

22. They all accidentally shot themselves.

23. Had to stay home to defend their trailer parks from a rumored Bureau of Land Management takeover.

24. Washington-area stores ran out of Twizzlers, so they panicked and went back home.

25. Cliven Bundy gave a live lecture on the Negro on the same day, couldn’t miss the chance of being enlightened.

26. Found out that Washington-area liquor stores don’t carry Old Milwaukee or Pabst Blue Ribbon.

27. Illegal to ride lawn mowers on the streets of Washington.

28. They couldn’t find their teeth, and they don’t go out without them.

29. If you count the voices in the heads of the people who showed up, there were 30 million people there.

30. It’s square dance night at the VFW hall, and they promised their sisters they’d take them.

31. Got caught up at Waffle House, had their buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

32. Their dogs were in heat.

33. Can’t leave Cliven Bundy’s ranch quite yet.

34. They were all raptured.

35. Their government disability checks weren’t enough to get them to Washington, which is all Obama’s fault.

America's Secret War: U.S. Bombing In Laos

Click here for an article at Mother Jones entitled "Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos," by H.F. Bhojani. An excerpt:

Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country. The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.

And people are still dying in Laos as a result of those raids:

More than 100 Laotians fall victim to unexploded cluster bombs annually, delayed casualties of Operation Barrel Roll and Operation Steel Tiger, which dropped 270 million cluster bomblets. Packed by the dozens or hundreds in canisters, cluster bombs are designed to open in midair, scattering small explosives across a wide radius. Yet not all of them detonated, and today, 80 million live bomblets lurk under Laos' soil.

The article contains this astonishing video:

Descending Mt. Eiger

Once upon a time, I dreamed of climbing the Eiger. But I never thought of doing this:

Happy Mother's Day?

This little gem is from opponents of gun reform.

Cat To The Rescue!

This is a cat chasing off an 8-month-old Labrador-Chow cross that attacked a 4-year-old boy in Bakersfield, California.



The dog will be euthanized after a 10-day quarantine.

Thank God There's No More Racism, Billie.

25 Bushisms

Hard to believe this man was president of the United States for eight years.

1. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."—Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

2. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

3. "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

4. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."—Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

5. "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."—declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

6. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''—Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

7. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."—Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006

8. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

9. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that."—discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007

10. "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq."—meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

11. "We ought to make the pie higher."—South Carolina Republican debate, Feb. 15, 2000

12. "There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

13. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."—speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

14. "We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers."—Houston, Sept. 6, 2000

15. "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

16. "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."—U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000

17. "People say, 'How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?' You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you."—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

18. "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness."—CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

19. "I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend."—on the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2005

20. "I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to—the beauty of playing baseball."—Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

21. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

22. "You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war president. No president wants to be a war president, but I am one."—Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2006

23. "There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.' "—Boston, Oct. 3, 2000

24. "They misunderestimated me."—Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

25. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

h/t to Digby, Hullabaloo.

Words To Live By

(Larry Hardiman's is my favorite.) Thanks to "Bill in Portland Maine":

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." ---H.L. Mencken

“True happiness in politics is a wide open hammer-shot on a poor bastard who knows he’s trapped, but can’t flee.” ---Hunter S. Thompson

"Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." ---John F. Kennedy

"Politics is more difficult than physics." ---Albert Einstein

"There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail." ---Will Rogers

"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other" ---Oscar Ameringer

"The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'." ---Larry Hardiman

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." ---Napoleon

World Trade Center BASE Jump

Not the best BASE jump video ever. Three guys jumped off the World Trade Center tower and are now facing felony charges of some kind. It's at night, and the view from the top of the tower is pretty good -- not great, but pretty good.

I don't know why these guys have to use bad language when they know the footage is going to be widely viewed on the Internet, but ... oh, well.

And I don't know why the guy dumped so high -- no freefall at all. The canopy is open almost before you realize he's jumped. Why not fall for a while? Youère only -- mon dieu! My keyboard has switched to francais! (No cedilla under the Èc,È though -- maybe itès only the apostrophe key thatès gone weird.

Anyway, as I was saying, youère only wearing one parachute, so itès not like you can deploy your reserve anyway.

Some of the canopy-ride footage is really pretty.

Death Panels!

Click here for a story on Politico (Or as Charles Pierce calls it, "Tiger Beat on the Potomac") by Harold Pollack entitled Death on the Installment Plan, with a subtitle, Now we know: Rejecting the Medicaid expansion could kill nearly 6,000 people each year. A study of the Massachusetts (Romney Care) system published in Annals of Internal Medicine showed that

Insurance coverage reduced mortality rates by about 30 percent. For every 830 people newly insured, Massachusetts prevented one death per year.

The last paragraph of the article:

One thing is for sure. If anything close to these results apply, the ACA is saving many lives every year. The new law is projected to cover more than 20 million adults who would otherwise go uninsured. The Massachusetts estimates imply that the ACA will prevent something in the neighborhood of 24,096 deaths every year (simply: 20 million divided by 830). That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in gun homicides. It’s considerably more than the number of Americans who die from HIV/AIDS.

So when Republican-dominated state legislatures refuse federal grants to cover 5 million of their poorest citizens with Medicaid insurance, doesn't that make them -- DEATH PANELS?

Joe Biden, Superstar

With help from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and John Boehner: