“Treason’s Greetings” To You Too, Laura!

I give you the following based on this (and just in time for the “War on Christmas”)…

Laura the “Code Red” tyrant
Ran her Fox News show with dread
Her brother this September
Said her heart is “kind of dead”
Comparing libs to ISIS
Wasn’t for her one bit strange
Like piling on Jim Acosta
And ignoring climate change

Then when David Hogg fought back to Laura’s tweet one day
Fox execs all ran and hid, ‘cos “you don’t attack a kid”

Still advertisers left her, though she did retain her job
But Laura was apoplectic: “They all gave in to the mob!”

Seriously, something is wrong with her…

Update 12/7/18: Pot, meet kettle.

Update 6/2/19: Looks like Laura is having more sponsor trouble (here).

Report Card for “Bri-Fi,” 2018

As we know, the mid-term elections are fast approaching, so I thought now was as good a time as any to take a look at what our Wet Noodle 2.0 U.S. House Rep for PA-01 was up to (I’m referring to Brian Fitzpatrick of course).

To begin, it should be noted that Bri-Fi sought to burnish his “pro-life” bona fides by voting for a 20-week abortion ban (that and other votes are noted here – fortunately, as noted here, the ban was rejected by the U.S. Senate in January).

As noted here, though…

Nearly 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks, but when they are needed later in pregnancy, it’s often in very complex circumstances. For example, severe fetal anomalies and serious risks to the woman’s health — the kind of situations where a woman and her doctor need every medical option available.

20-week bans are also highly unpopular throughout the country. 61% of all voters say abortion should be legal after 20 weeks. Plus, Democrats (78%), Republicans (62%), and Independents (71%) say this is the wrong issue for lawmakers to be spending time on.

Fitzpatrick also voted for a permanent ban on federal funds for abortions or health coverage that includes abortions (which is pointless because federal funding for abortions is already banned under the Hyde Amendment, named after a serial philanderer in Congress – more here).

When it comes to civil liberties, Fitzpatrick also voted to reauthorize warrantless spying under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); Republicans managed to make it worse in the process according to some fourth amendment advocates (a group which should include everyone I realize).

As noted here…

“Not only does the (reauthorized) bill say you have our blessing to collect communications that contain a target’s email address, it also endorses collecting communications that merely contain a reference to the target,” says Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “So literally if you and I sent an email to each other that had the word ISIS in it, if you and I send an email that talks about ISIS, under this bill the government is authorized to collect it.” (Assuming ISIS is a group that the NSA is specifically targeting.)

The bill does impose a warrant requirement upon the FBI, but the way it’s written appears to weaken privacy protections rather than strengthen them, says Goitein. Under the legislation, FBI agents need a warrant to search the Section 702 database when a criminal investigation has already been opened, but not when national security is involved. That means the FBI can query the database on nothing more than a tip. “It incentivizes doing searches earlier and earlier, when it’s less and less justified,” says Goitein.

Fitzpatrick also voted along with Generalissimo Trump (which he has done about 83 percent of the time according to Nate Silver) in the matter of disciplining VA whistleblowers (here).

Also, as noted here…

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s report says VA whistleblowers are far more likely than their colleagues to face discipline or removal after reporting misconduct.

…

The number of VA workers fired is up under President Trump. But congressional Democrats and the VA’s union cite VA data showing that the vast majority of those fired in the first five months of 2018 were low-level food service, laundry and custodial staff the majority of whom are veterans. In that same period, only 15 out of 1,096 employees fired were supervisors.

This report comes as the VA’s own inspector general has publicly clashed recently with the VA leadership over access to documents and information about whistleblower adjudication.

A recent NPR investigation showed a pattern of often vicious whistleblower retaliation at the VA in central Alabama and sidelining of whistleblowers in Indiana.

There’s also a news report this week that the VA, under Acting Secretary Peter O’Rourke, is aggressively reassigning or forcing out VA staff members thought to be disloyal to President Trump and his agenda for the agency.

I realize that we’ve had VA issues with both Democratic and Republican presidents (probably the result of too many damn wars and too many of our heroes getting maimed in our country’s service and putting a strain on available resources), but I don’t know of anyone being forced out for being “disloyal” to President Obama.

And speaking of Number 44, Fitzpatrick repeatedly attacked Obama-era rules, including a rule blocking states from defunding Planned Parenthood (here) as well as another rule requiring employers to keep better record of workplace injuries (here). He also voted to overturn a rule prohibiting labor law violators from eligibility for federal contracts, allowing these companies to underpay their workers once more and evade safety regulations (here).

Fitzpatrick also voted to overturn an Obama rule banning drug testing jobless applying for unemployment. As noted here…

As things have long stood, states only had the authority to institute drug tests for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash welfare program. Thus far, 13 states have instituted such regimes. But what their experience has proven year after year is that the tests, while costly to administer, turn up very few positive test results. Out of about 250,000 applicants and recipients among these states in 2016, just 369 tested positive; in four states, exactly zero people tested positive for illegal drug use. In the states with positive results, they ranged from a low of 0.07 percent of all applicants to a high of 2.14 percent, rates far below the nearly 10 percent drug use rate among the general population.

…

Meanwhile, states collectively spent $1.6 million on drug testing, on top of the nearly $2 million spent during the previous two years, despite the apparent ineffectiveness of these programs. That’s money that could instead be used to expand welfare benefits or even drug treatment programs.

Another vote from Fitzpatrick to overturn Internet privacy rules allowed internet service providers, or ISPs, to sell “financial and medical information. Social Security numbers, web browsing history, mobile app usage (and) even the content of your emails and online chats,” according to Sam Gustin of the web site Motherboard (vote is here).

Fitzpatrick also voted to end federal checks preventing more than 167,000 veterans deemed “mentally incompetent” from keeping or purchasing firearms (H.R. 1181). This is part and parcel of Bri-Fi’s utterly craven voting recording in near-total fealty to the NRA. As noted here:

In February 2017, Fitzpatrick voted to block the Social Security Administration from sharing information with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System on people with mental disorders in order to prevent them from purchasing firearms.

In November, 2017 Fitzpatrick voted twice to block the establishment of a select committee on gun violence prevention.

In December 2017, Fitzpatrick said he supports concealed carry reciprocity which would force states like Pennsylvania to defer to the concealed carry weapon laws of more pro-gun states like Texas.

In February 2018, Fitzpatrick voted to kill consideration of legislation on gun regulations.

In March 2018, Fitzpatrick voted to block three bills to close gun safety loopholes including the gun show, internet sale, and classified ad background check loopholes to prevent the sale of guns without a completed background check.

Fitzpatrick also voted to prohibit Department of Justice (DOJ) settlements requiring parties to donate monies to outside groups. This may seem a bit obscure, but as a result, the following should be noted from here…

The decision (to distribute settlement funds only to those directly harmed by wrongdoing) by the Justice Department throws into question an upcoming $12 million settlement against Harley-Davidson. As part of the settlement, the motorcycle manufacturer agreed to stop selling illegal after-market devices that increase the air pollution emitted by the motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson had agreed to donate $3 million to a project to reduce air pollution, the Justice Department said in August. With Sessions’s decision Monday, that settlement’s fate is now up in the air.

Also, Fitzpatrick voted to get rid of financial protection regulations, otherwise known as the Dodd-Frank Act, put in place to increase financial stability and consumer protections in the wake of the 2008 recession. As Gregg Gelzinis of the Center for American Progress notes here…

The CHOICE Act also allows banks of any size to opt out of a suite of crucial regulations—such as stress testing, living wills, risk-based capital requirements, liquidity requirements and more—if they maintain a leverage ratio of 10 percent. And it repeals the Volcker Rule’s ban on risky proprietary trading bets. A 10 percent leverage ratio is not nearly enough capital to justify such drastic deregulation.

Furthermore, the CHOICE Act shreds the authority and resources of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the council of financial regulators tasked with looking at risks across the financial system. FSOC would no longer have the power to address dangers that emerge outside of the traditional banking sector, putting taxpayers at risk. The bill also eliminates the Office of Financial Research, which provides data-driven research support to FSOC to help identify emerging risks.

And speaking of money matters, Fitzpatrick also voted for his party’s so-called tax reform bill last December, which adds about $1 trillion to the deficit (which, of course, Republicans only care about when they’re trying to utterly gut the social safety net). The non-partisan Tax Policy Center found that after the tax plan has taken full effect in 2027, 80 percent of the benefits would go to the top 1 percent of earners in this country. When it comes to tax cuts, the top 1 percent will get an average cut of $1,022,120, while the middle 20 percent will get an average cut of $420, eviscerating any notion that the middle class are the key beneficiaries of the Republicans’ “Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code.”

As noted here…

Should Trump-state Senate Democrats who voted against the tax bill, like Claire McCaskill (Missouri), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Joe Donnelly (Indiana), and Jon Tester (Montana), really fear electoral backlash?

Absolutely not, according to our analysis. In fact, they should highlight their opposition to Trump’s tax bill even in these red states.

Most polling about the bill has been national, and it suggests broad unpopularity. Our analysis of exclusive national data to model state support for the tax bill suggests that Democrats have little to fear from the GOP law and should embrace progressive policies to mobilize opposition.

Update 10/5/18: For the record, here is Fitzpatrick’s vote from December, and here is a recent vote to make the tax cuts for the rich permanent – heckuva job!

And for anyone out there who may have bought into the “trickle down” lie still after all this time, I give you the following (here)…

In the first six months after the Trump tax cuts were passed, corporate investment in equipment declined, America’s projected long-term deficit swelled by nearly $2 trillion, and wages for the vast majority of American workers fell on an inflation-adjusted basis.

And there is no sign that reality will start comporting with the GOP’s predictions any time soon. As the Washington Post’s Heather Long notes, Morgan Stanley reported last month that America’s businesses are planning less future capital spending now than they were a few months ago. And that finding is bolstered by a recent survey of 393 businesses from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the audit firm RSM, which found that only 38 percent of those firms plan to increase investment over the next three years.

Instead of channeling their profits into productive investment, S&P 500 companies are on pace to plow a record-setting $800 billion into buying back their own stocks. The point of such “stock buybacks” is to increase a firm’s share price (and thus, in many cases, the performance-based pay of its CEO) by reducing the supply of shares on the market.

Oh, and for good measure, it should be noted that, according to Nate Silver, Fitzpatrick voted no to impeachment resolutions against Trump at least twice (I realize this isn’t shocking given that they’re in the same party, but it should be pointed out for the record).

By himself, as far as I’m concerned, Brian Fitzpatrick hasn’t done nearly enough to merit another two years in the U.S. Congress. Worse, he’s part of a majority that has done nothing whatsoever to rein in a calamitously unqualified individual currently taking up space in An Oval Office.

Given that, I see absolutely no alternative than to vote for Scott Wallace for Congress from PA-01 on November 6th.

Friday Mashup (8/22/14)

I give you the following from Fix Noise “Democrat” Doug Schoen here…

In November, Thomas Foley, a businessman and former ambassador to Ireland, will take on Connecticut Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy in a re-match of the 2010 battle for governor that Foley lost by about 6,500 votes.

Foley had an easy time in his Republican primary last week, defeating State Senate minority leader John McKinney by over ten points. But taking on the sitting governor will be a difficult task.

As I’ve discussed in previous pieces on this summer’s primaries, we are in – and have been in – for some major upsets. Chief evidence of this remains Eric Cantor’s stunning defeat as well as Hawaii Democrat Governor Neil Abercrombie’s loss just last week.

Both Cantor and Abercrombie lost because they alienated core constituencies in their respective parties. For Abercrombie, it was “Liberals, moderates, retirees, teachers, the rich, the poor,” etc., as Daily Kos diarist Skaje points out here. For Cantor, it was teabagging wingnuts who opposed anything having to do with immigration reform (and who, as far as I’m concerned, are partly responsible for this).

Basically, it looks like Malloy has to give Foley some kind of an opportunity to make inroads against him, and Schoen’s claim that Malloy is supposedly “politicizing” the gun issue by signing onto the common sense reforms that came out of the Sandy Hook massacre doesn’t really count as far as I’m concerned (I was pleasantly surprised to read Schoen wisely dismiss a garbage poll on the contest from Real Clear Politics, one claiming that Foley had a 7-point lead; Schoen said the race is closer to a toss-up, which, given the fact that we haven’t hit the post-Labor Day “sprint” yet in our elections, is probably right – public opinion doesn’t appear to have completely settled one way or the other yet).

As for Foley, though, I think we should keep the following in mind:

He once said to unemployed Connecticut factory workers here that “it’s your fault that the plant is closing” (good one).

As noted here, Foley is still working on his “urban strategy” to go against Malloy in places like Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport.

And as noted here, Foley has claimed that he can balance budgets by cutting spending without raising taxes (yes, this is a recording), but when it comes to specifics, cue the sound of crickets.

Tom Foley looks like another Romney-esque “one percenter” who seems to believe that he merits political office merely by the force of his resume. Hopefully that matter will be settled once and for all after Election Day in a few months.

Next, I guess it’s really true that Number 44 wants to be impeached – at least, according to Repug U.S. House Rep Mick Mulvaney here…

“Believe me, let’s make one thing perfectly clear,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina in a radio interview with WQSC 1340 last week. “The only people who want impeachment more than the right wing of the Republican Party is the entire Democrat Party.”

“Democrat” Party, huh? Bless Mulvaney’s pointed little head…

“Oh, they’re desperate for impeachment. They would love to be able to talk about impeachment and immigration between now and the November elections. Instead of talking about jobs, and the economy, and health care. They are desperate to change the dialogue, which is exactly why you heard the president starting to talk about his amnesty cause (sic) he’s begging to be impeached.”

Well, isn’t that just special from Mulvaney? Oh, and by the way, I’d like to point out the following:

Mulvaney was one of 67 U.S. House Republicans who voted against relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, as noted here (of course).

He said that claims that global warming is, at least, in part man-made are “baseless” here (again, of course).

He said in January 2011 that he didn’t “know” what the consequences would be if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, even though a report from the Congressional Research Service laid it out pretty clearly here.

And I think this is some overly-artful language from Mulvaney on the question of immigration reform (from here):

“There are really two good arguments against immigration reform that have nothing to do with immigration,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.). “One is that the president can’t be trusted to enforce all sides of a compromise. … The other one is this tactical question about whether it’s a good idea to do before the election, and I don’t know if that is a settled issue yet.”

Translated: Republicans can’t do anything on immigration because of that baaad Kenyan Muslim Socialist and because it’s too close to an election and we don’t want to piss off our base.

And on the question of who really wants Obama to be impeached, I believe this provides some much-needed clarity on the subject.

Further, “No Corporate Tax” Pat Toomey is back to demonize as only he can (here)…

Medical need is usually a leading factor for prioritization on the lung transplant waiting list. By that criterion, (12-year-old Sarah Murnaghan) would have likely ranked near the top of the donor list for a new lung. But a federal policy prevented children under age 12 from being considered for a mature lung until all adult candidates in the region were ruled out. This made the likelihood of Sarah receiving a life-saving transplant remote, due to the short supply of child donors.

Sarah’s family took the fight to social media, to the Department of Health and Human Services, and to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. They asked that children under 12 be considered for adult lung transplants – using the same criteria for adult consideration – if doctors substantiated that an adult transplant would be viable.

As Sarah herself said, “I’m not going for easy, I’m going for possible.”

After speaking with Sarah’s mother, Janet, I took Sarah’s cause to then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. I asked the secretary to use her authority to make medical need and suitability, rather than age, the primary criteria in determining how organ donations are prioritized. I asked her to free the transplantation network to help children who needed lung transplants.

My request was not honored.

Toomey’s editorial goes on to tell us that the Murnaghan family filed a lawsuit to prevent implementation of the policy that prevented their daughter from receiving an adult lung transplant. The judge ruled in favor of the Murnaghans, and she received a first lung transplant that apparently did not go well, but the second transplant was successful, to the point where she “is now breathing on her own and riding her bike with her brothers and sister. She’s proof that adult organs fitted to size can work in children.”

Only a ghoul would not take heart at this story, and be glad that Sarah Murnaghan received her successful lung transplant. However, I think the following should be noted from here…

…there’s a lot to think about here, not just the poignancy of a 10-year-old’s struggle. Current transplant policies are set up to ensure fairness — as much as possible in a system with too many patients and too few donors. While some political pundits savaged Sebelius as a one-person “death panel,” they ignore the fact that the transplant rules are designed to be democratic, based on need — to keep the rich and politically connected from cutting into line. The 12-year-old dividing line was enacted not to punish kids, but to help them — to make sure adults don’t dip into the severely limited pool of organs that become available from the deaths of children.

The Murnaghans’ lawsuit could be viewed as cutting in line, too, except that it raises a question of bias, of eligible children being denied adult organs. In such cases, they argue, children should be rated by the other factors that go into eligibility — severity and nature of the need, length of time on a waiting list, etc.

The numbers explain why a uniform, transparent system is morally and ethically essential. In Pennsylvania, 14 children and 148 adults are now on the list to receive lungs. Ten of those children and 42 adults have been waiting for more than a year for a call. Lungs are one of the most difficult organs to transplant — especially in children, and pediatric donations are rare. As long as demand outpaces supply, one person’s good fortune will be disappointment for others.

So, far from criticizing one-time HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Toomey should acknowledge that she was only following established procedures based on need.

But of course why should Toomey actually give credit to anyone having anything to do with the Affordable Care Law? As noted here, he once complained that his wife supposedly faced difficulties in signing up via an exchange, though Toomey neglected to mention in a radio address that she was eventually able to do so.

If he didn’t deviate from the wingnut script on this then, why should he do so now?

Continuing (and sticking with PA politicians and health care issues), it looks like Governor Tom “Space Cadet” Corbett signed a bill into law called the “Down’s Syndrome Education Act,” (originally sponsored by state senator Randy Vulakovich…guess which party?) which mandates that health care providers recite a script to parents who receive the sad news that their son or daughter will be born with Down’s Syndrome (to be fair, Down’s kids are very loving and creative in their way, but it’s definitely an added burden to parents to take care of them, and it’s silly to pretend that that’s not the case – more here).

Also, I think the following should be noted from here…

According to the text of the legislation, the materials will include “up-to-date, evidence-based information about Down syndrome,” including “physical, developmental, educational and psychosocial outcomes,” life expectancy, and “any other information the department deems necessary.”

The bill was signed into law July 18, and will take effect 60 days after that date.

RH Reality Check asked the Pennsylvania Department of Health for the script materials, but a department spokesperson said the materials don’t yet exist. “The bill was signed on July 18 so their research into the matter has just begun,” the spokesperson told RH Reality Check.

RH Reality Check also asked which organizations have provided information that will be used to develop the script, but that remains unclear. An early version of the bill lists the Jerome Lejeune Foundation, Parent to Parent of Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Early Intervention, though those organizations were either removed or crossed out in the final version of the legislation.

By signing a law mandating that doctors read a script that doesn’t yet exist, there is no way to assess if the materials are biased, or comply with scientific consensus—which is not always the case when it comes to government-mandated physician scripts, especially when the targeted patients are pregnant women.

So a bill (titled “Chloe’s Law,” in reference to an 11-year-old girl whose father advocated for the policy) was signed into law by Corbett mandating what doctors are supposed to tell their patients in the event that they’re going to be parents of a Down’s child…but the script isn’t ready yet? Really??

Continuing with rhrealitycheck…

The Pennsylvania Medical Society, a professional association of doctors in the state, opposes the legislation. Their concerns aren’t just the content of the script; they don’t believe the government should be mandating that physicians read specific materials to patients at all.

…

Though a disproportionate number of these bills apply only to doctors when they are treating pregnant women, states have gagged or coerced physician communications in recent years for other politicized public health issues. In 2012, Pennsylvania passed what’s been called the “doctor’s gag rule” in regard to chemicals involved in fracking, the process of extracting natural gas that many experts believe is dangerous. Since 2011, many states have passed laws making it illegal for physicians to ask patients about gun ownership or gun storage, against the “clear recommendation” of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Still, a disproportionate number of these types of bills implemented around the country do apply only to doctors treating pregnant women. The most well-known example is medically unnecessary forced ultrasound examinations.

Such policies have been called “misinformed consent” laws when they require doctors to relay medically inaccurate information to patients. According to the Guttmacher Institute, five states mandate that doctors relay “medically inaccurate claims of a link between induced abortion and breast cancer.” Seven states falsely assert that women experience only negative emotional responses after having an abortion.

All told, 32 states mandate counseling designed to dissuade a pregnant women from having an abortion.

One thing I will say in Corbett’s defense is that an extra $40 million was added to the budget for the Department of Public Welfare for people with intellectual disabilities (and Down’s certainly qualifies), so there is a bit of “walking the walk” as opposed to just “talking the talk” going on here. I don’t know, though, whether or not this is part of Corbett’s “Healthy PA” initiative, which is taking a detour and depriving PA residents of the benefits of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Law (as noted by the author here). Also, this extra $40 million is, I guess, supposed to make up for Corbett’s shortfall of related funding in non-election years, as noted here. However, one would have to be truly naive (and perhaps a bit jaded too I guess) not to see this legislation as a bit of a sop to the “pro-life” crowd (hence the fact that it was linked to the National Catholic Register).

However, if you’re as fed up with Corbett’s antics on this and other issues as I am, then please click here to do something about it.

Another thing I want to point out – the link above to the Register article is dated July 21st. I saw the story on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 19th.

When it comes to News For Republicans brought to you by Philadelphia’s Conservative Newspaper of Record, I would say that they need to work on the whole “timeliness” thing.

Finally, in case you were wondering how long it would take for the wingnuts to politicize the horrible, cowardly murder of reporter James Foley at the hands of these ISIS butchers – well, three, two, one (here)…

Will the videotaped execution of James Foley shock America out of our dangerous flirtation with isolationism?

The gruesome beheading of the 40-year-old photojournalist should scream out a warning to any who still doubt: This isn’t just some war out there. It’s about us.

…

“I bet they’re asleep in New York; I bet they’re asleep all over America,” says Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” as he finally abandons his own neutrality in World War II.

Oh brother…

Yes, Rick Blaine does indeed say that in “Casablanca,” but he does so in a remorseful, drunken stupor in the presence of piano player Sam (Dooley Wilson) after long-lost love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) visits (noted here). The moment is anything but a display of what some might call “American exceptionalism.”

I consider Rachel Maddow far smarter than I will ever be on this stuff, and she recently pointed out that we should remember that life forms such as these ISIS characters use murder as a tactic. They want us to jump back into that area of the world “both feet first,” if you will, with an increased military presence, so we can utterly bankrupt ourselves when it comes to our military and economic assets, to say nothing of the invaluable treasure of the men and women in our armed forces, risking life and limb at every moment.

Am I saying not to fight back? Of course not. I’m only saying that we should do it with intelligence, mindful of the rule of law and the international cooperation so completely necessary to defeat entities such as these ISIS mongrels.

After all, I sincerely hope that we haven’t already forgotten what happened the last time we united behind a president who decided to “go with his gut” on the issue of terrorism as well as other matters. Have we?

Friday Mashup (7/25/14)

Lots to get to here…

Things have been a bit quiet on the “gun front” lately (good news because it means fewer people than normal are dying as a result – hopefully it will stay that way), though this item recently appeared, including the following…

Beretta U.S.A. announced Tuesday that company concerns over a strict gun-control law enacted in Maryland last year have made it necessary to move its weapons making out of the state to Tennessee.

The well-known gun maker said it will move to a new production facility it is building in the Nashville suburb of Gallatin that is set to open in mid-2015.

Beretta general manager Jeff Cooper said that a sweeping gun-control measure that was passed last year initially contained provisions that would have prohibited the Italian gun maker from being able to produce, store or even import into Maryland the products that the company sells around the world. While the legislation was changed to remove some of those provisions, Cooper said the possibility that such restrictions could be reinstated left the company worried about maintaining a firearm-making factory in Maryland.

So Beretta decided to move their operations from Maryland to Tennessee supposedly because of those gol-darned liberals and their danged gun laws, even though the Maryland legislation was changed to try and mollify Beretta.

However, I think we need to note something else (from a related story here)…

Beretta said they will not begin the transition process of moving production to Gallatin until sometime in 2015. The company added it had no plans to relocate its office, administrative or executive support functions from the Maryland facility.

Really? I wonder why not? I mean, if you’re gonna “talk the talk” about moving all the jobs, then why not actually, y’know, move all of the jobs.

Could it possibly be because, as noted here, the state minimum wage for Maryland is $7.25 an hour, but for Tennessee…well, there is no state minimum wage?

Maybe Tennessee deserves Beretta, and I don’t mean that as a compliment; here, the reviewer of Beretta’s Cx4 Storm, which apparently can substitute as a semiautomatic pistol, concluded that “it is basically a weapon designed to kill and maim people in a quick, efficient manner…In the hands of even an unskilled shooter, it can still accomplish that purpose quite effectively.”

Terrific.

Next, someone named Abby Johnson (must…resist…Blazing Saddles…snark) at The Daily Tucker tells us the following here…

Johnson, who left the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas in 2010, released a budget statement for the 2010 fiscal year she said shows that the clinic was expected to perform at least 1,135 abortions that year.

Johnson’s group, And Then There Were None, released a photograph a few weeks ago of a Colorado clinic receiving an award for having performed more abortions in the first half of the 2013 fiscal year than they had in the second half of the 2012 fiscal year.

Even though, as noted here according to the law, no federal funds are allowed to be used for abortions (so basically, if there had been an audit, that Planned Parenthood office would have lost its federal funding).

I find Johnson’s claims hard to believe, particularly when you consider the following (here)…

(Johnson), a former Planned Parenthood employee turned antiabortion activist, gave a workshop at Heartbeat International’s 2012 conference titled “Competing With the Abortion Industry.” According to audio of the event, Johnson told participants, ”We want to look professional. We want to look businesslike. And yeah, we do kind of want to look medical.” She discouraged them from foregrounding their religious affiliation, so as to better trick women: “We want to appear neutral on the outside. The best call, the best client you ever get is one that thinks they’re walking into an abortion clinic. Those are the best clients that could ever walk in your door or call your center, the ones that think you provide abortions.”

Before she engages in any more deception on matters related to women’s health care, I honestly think Johnson ought to get straight on the whole “not bearing false witness” thing in accordance with the faith she claims she’s trying to practice. Particularly since, despite her best efforts and those of her fellow wingnuts, Roe v. Wade still happens to be the law of the land.

Further, Rich Lowry blames Number 44 as follows (here)…

According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of immigrants younger than 18 who were deported or turned away from ports of entry declined from 8,143 in 2008 to 1,669 last year. There were 95 minors deported from the entire interior of the country last year.

Of course, far be it for Lowry to note the effects of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 which, as noted below, was passed and signed into law by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History (here).

In 2008, in the lame-duck session of a presidential year when the party’s president and nominee were both immigration reformers, Congress easily passed the (Act – Wilberforce was a British parliamentarian who led the slavery abolition movement). No one in the House or Senate opposed a law intended to rescue children from exploitative pimps—legislation that allowed young people to attain “special immigrant juvenile status.” The Obama administration is citing this as the reason why deportations have plunged, and asked Congress to fix it.

Oh yeah, like that will happen with Boehner and company, who never imagined a “scandal” they didn’t like concerning this president.

Oh, and I know I’m going out of order a bit, but Lowry inflicts the following also…

The first rule in a crisis for any executive is put on his windbreaker and boots and get out on the ground. President George W. Bush didn’t do it soon enough after Hurricane Katrina and, politically, could never make up for it, no matter how many times he visited New Orleans subsequently. Obama’s bizarre resistance to visiting the border on his fundraising swing out West fueled talk of the influx as Obama’s “Katrina moment.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

To begin, I don’t know if it matters one bit whether or not President Obama goes to the border; as noted here, he described such a move as “cheap theater,” which I think is absolutely correct. Besides, as noted here, many of Obama’s most vocal critics on this haven’t been to the border either, including “Man Tan” Boehner, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wy) and the thoroughly odious Ron Johnson (R-WI). You can also lump “Calgary” Cruz into the mix, along with Reps “Smokey Joe” Barton and Jeb Hensarling, all of Texas, which is particularly ridiculous (more on Hensarling shortly).

Also, I really think the wingnuts should give the “Obama/Katrina” thing a rest, particularly when you consider the following from here; I believe the only tragedies and/or foibles that our corporate media haven’t declared to be an “Obama/Katrina” moment would be the Chicago Fire, the Kennedy assassination (either one), the Challenger shuttle disaster, and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (you can Google it, the event and/or the song – apparently, everything else is fair game).

Continuing (and speaking of Hensarling), I give you the following from here (where he and his pals try out a lot of new right-wing talking points about Dodd-Frank)…

Thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Qualified Mortgage rule, Dodd-Frank makes it harder for low and moderate-income Americans to buy a home. According to a Federal Reserve study, roughly one third of African-American and Hispanic borrowers would not be able to obtain a mortgage based solely on the CFPB’s debt-to-income requirements.

In response, I give you the following (here)…

Dodd-Frank tried to (put in place) new consumer protection rules requiring banks to verify a borrower’s ability to repay a loan before extending it. At Wednesday’s hearing, much of the GOP criticism focused on false allegations about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Qualified Mortgage regulation, or QM.

“You don’t protect consumers by taking away or limiting products, like the CFPB does through the Qualified Mortgage rule,” Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) said.

The QM rule doesn’t ban anything. It’s a basic test of whether a loan is designed to line a lender’s pockets by ripping off a borrower. And it gives banks special perks for meeting the CFPB’s high-quality loan standards, protecting them from predatory lending lawsuits. In practice, that means limiting the amount lenders charge in points and fees to 3 percent of the loan value, banning balloon loans with a big lump sum due at the end of the mortgage…

…

Hensarling was particularly vocal about the Dodd-Frank law’s effect on minority borrowers, claiming a Federal Reserve study shows that “about one-third of blacks and Hispanics would not be able to obtain a mortgage,” based on the rule’s requirement that monthly borrower debts not exceed 43 percent of monthly income.

That’s true, according to the Fed’s 2010 data. It’s also generally considered bad personal finance to have that much of your income tied up with debt payments.

Also, this tells us more about the CFPB’s mortgage rules modifications. And as far as debt-to-income requirements, I give you the following from here…

Lenders will have to verify borrowers’ income, assets and debt before signing them up for home loans. Such common-sense practices anchored the mortgage market for decades but were cast aside in the lead-up to the meltdown as banks relaxed standards to churn out more lucrative loans. The result was millions of homeowners who were unable to manage their mortgages once the market tanked.

And…

In response, the CFPB has created a category of home loans that offer lenders broad legal protections against borrower lawsuits, provided they adhere to certain criteria. These “qualified mortgages” limit upfront fees and bar risky features such as no-interest periods that can leave homeowners stuck with unsustainable loans.

Hensarling also propagandizes as follows…

Dodd-Frank’s Volcker rule makes U.S. capital markets less competitive against other international financial centers. It’s more expensive for U.S. companies to raise working capital and harder for Americans saving for retirement or their children’s college educations.

In response, this tells us more about the supposedly dreaded “Volcker rule”…

A federal regulation that prohibits banks from conducting certain investment activities with their own accounts, and limits their ownership of and relationship with hedge funds and private equity funds, also called covered funds. The Volcker Rule’s purpose is to prevent banks from making certain types of speculative investments that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

Here is more from Hensarling…

Dodd-Frank created the Financial Stability Oversight Council and gave it the power to designate certain large businesses as “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” (SIFIs). Now insurance companies that pose no discernible systemic risk to the economy are being subjected to unnecessary regulation that dries up capital for infrastructure projects, and harms investors and policy-holders.

In response (here)…

AIG and GE Capital chose not to fight the (Financial Stability Oversight Council’s) efforts to bring them under tougher regulatory scrutiny (by declaring them SIFIs).

“AIG did not contest this designation and welcomes it,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Russell Wilkerson, a spokesman for GE Capital, which is the financial services arm of General Electric, said the company had been prepared for the council’s decision.

“We have strong capital and liquidity positions, and we are already supervised by the Fed,” he said.

The oversight group does not name companies under consideration for this designation until it makes a final decision, but AIG and GE Capital had previously disclosed that the council had proposed declaring them systemically risky.

Prudential Financial had also disclosed that the council had proposed designating it as systemically risky, but the company last week said it would contest the proposal by asking for a hearing before the regulatory group.

I think we’ve figured out at this point that Hensarling and his pals are doing everything they can to try and scuttle financial reform, which is perfectly in lack of character for a guy who believes in fairy tales about how those alleged deadbeats with credit card balances are hurting the “bottom line” of the lending institutions – actually, as the poster notes here, the opposite is true.

Hensarling, by the way, is chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. And do you know who else serves on that committee?

Why, our own Mikey the Beloved, of course – with that in mind, I give you this from the Kevin Strouse campaign (running to unseat Mikey in PA-08)…

Four Years After Authorization of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Congressman Fitzpatrick Continues to Advocate for Banks, the Ultra-Wealthy and Special Interests Instead of People

Kevin Strouse exposes Congressman Fitzpatrick’s self-interested votes to protect the big banks and special interests that support his campaign, putting 8th district consumers at risk.

Bristol, PA – Yesterday (7/21) marked the fourth anniversary of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act becoming law. The act, which was passed in response to the financial crisis caused by irresponsible banks and self-interested politicians, created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to enforce laws and ensure that the financial industry works for all Americans – not just big banks. Democratic Congressional candidate Kevin Strouse called out Congressman Fitzpatrick for his relentless attempts to weaken this law which was designed to regulate many of the big banks and payday lenders who donate large sums to Fitzpatrick’s re-election campaigns.

In 2011 Congressman Fitzpatrick voted to eliminate the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On yet another occasion, he voted in 2012 to expand loopholes and exemptions covering derivatives.

Strouse commented, “It’s disappointing that my opponent has taken every opportunity he could to vote to weaken an agency whose sole mission is to protect consumers. Unfortunately, Congressman Fitzpatrick has proven himself to be another self-interested Washington insider who will tirelessly defend the big banks and special interests that he’s supposed to regulate as a member of the House Financial Services Committee, and then willingly turn his back on his middle class constituents.”

Despite Representative Fitzpatrick’s self-interested votes, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has made a real difference in peoples’ lives. To date, more than 15 million consumers have received $4.6 Billion in relief and refunds due to actions taken by the CFPB.

Strouse continued, “The people of Bucks and Montgomery counties are simply asking for a fair shot to experience economic opportunity that works for everyone in this country, and voters this fall will have a choice between electing a representative who will work to support middle-class families in the 8th District, or remaining left behind by Congressman Fitzpatrick and the dysfunctional Republican Congress.”

BACKGROUND:

Fitzpatrick voted to limit the effectiveness of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). [2011, HR 1315, Vote #261]

• The legislation would limit the effectiveness of the CFPB, a bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill, which “has the authority to regulate financial markets in ways meant to improve consumer protection”. The CFPB, which had a single director, would instead have a five-member board. This legislation would also change the two-thirds majority vote by the Financial Stability Oversight Council to override a CFPB decision to just a simple majority. [The Hill, 7/21/11; Washington Post, 7/22/11]
• Philadelphia Inquirer: Fitzpatrick voted to “Muzzle” the CFPB… [Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/27/11].

Fitzpatrick Voted to Expand Loopholes, Exemptions in Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill [HR 3336, Vote #180, 4/25/12]

• In 2012, Fitzpatrick voted to expand loopholes and exemptions covering derivatives in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. According to CQ, the bill “would exempt certain financial institutions regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from classification as swap dealers under Dodd-Frank. The law included a similar exemption for depository institutions and supporters say the change would allow farm credit institutions that are not designated as depository institutions to offer swaps to protect customer loans from sudden interest rate fluctuations.” [CQ, 4/25/12]

15 million consumers will receive $4.6 billion in relief due to actions taken by the CFPB. Source here.

###

Kevin Strouse is a former Army Ranger, CIA counterterrorism analyst, and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who lives in Middletown, Pa., with his wife, Amy, and two young children, Walter and Charlotte. He is currently Program Director of Teach2Serve, a non-profit that teaches social entrepreneurship to local high school students. He earned his BA from Columbia University and a Masters in Security Studies from Georgetown University, graduating with honors.

To support Kevin, click here.

Also related to financial stuff, it looks like none other than Mr.-Puppy-Dog-Eyes-With-The-Shiv is back with some supposedly glorious plan to lift everyone out of poverty with not one dime of new spending or (Heaven forbid!) a revenue increase of any type whatsoever, as his mouthpiece Reihan Salam tells us here…

…Loved by the right and loathed by the left, Ryan has been the architect of the most consequential Republican domestic policy initiatives of the Obama era. In spirit if not in name, Ryan spent much of President Obama’s first term as the leader of the opposition, rallying Republicans against Obamacare and in favor of long-term spending reductions. His controversial calls for entitlement and tax reform as chairman of the House Budget Committee were singled out by the president for over-the-top denunciation. In the spring of 2012, well before Ryan was named the Republican vice-presidential nominee, the president went so far as to characterize the Wisconsin congressman’s budget proposal as “thinly-veiled Social Darwinism.”

Yeah, well, that’s probably because it is “thinly veiled social Darwinism” (here).

So what exactly is Ryan’s supposedly wonderful new plan? Why, to consolidate stuff like SNAP and Section 8 housing funds into a block grant for states, where there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the funds will EVER be used inappropriately once federal oversight is removed. And of course, there will be NO PROBLEM with people who need housing funds but not food assistance losing out because the latter need will be over allocated by a state instead of the former one. Am I right (more here)?

Somehow I have a feeling that, if Hensarling, Mikey and their buddies were serious about balancing the books, they would not have cut the IRS enforcement budget by 25 percent (here). They also would not have recently passed “a whopping $287 billion business tax cut measure with no effort to pay for or offset that amount” (here).

And as former Reaganite Bruce Bartlett points out here…

As far as tax reform is concerned, the problem for Republicans is they don’t actually believe in the “reform” part of tax reform. That would be the part that eliminates unjustified tax cuts and loopholes to pay for statutory rate reductions. In their heart of hearts, Republicans only believe in tax cuts, especially for big corporations and the ultra-wealthy. They, like the right wing novelist Ayn Rand, believe that only the wealthy create wealth. Average workers are greedy parasites, especially when they have the temerity to join a union and, like Oliver Twist, ask for “more.” The Republican establishment pulled out all the stops recently to kill the unionization of an auto plant in Tennessee lest workers get too uppity.

Hmm, Tennessee huh? The same state where Beretta decided to move the majority of its workforce, as noted earlier. I guess it’s just a coincidence that Tennessee is also, apparently, virulently anti-union, huh?

I know better minds than mine have said this before, as I have also, but it needs to be repeated again. The Party of Reagan wants to take from the “have less” crowd and give to the “have more” crowd any way possible, and they don’t give a damn about balancing the budget or growing the economy. When it comes to their supposed fiscal stewardship, here endeth the lesson.

Finally, I don’t have anything particularly brilliant to say about this item, but I’m compelled to speak up anyway…

Many Pennsylvania drivers have long-awaited the increasing of the maximum speed limit. That day is coming next week.

The speed limit will be raised to 70 mph on a 100-mile stretch of toll road in the south-central part of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission announced Friday.

The 70 mph zone will be on the Turnpike mainline (Interstate 76) between the Blue Mountain Interchange (Exit 201) and the Morgantown Interchange (Exit 298) starting Wednesday.

Turnpike officials are planning a news conference for next week to detail future speed-limit changes across the Turnpike’s 550-mile system.

“Our studies have shown that the design of our system in this area can safely accommodate the higher speed limit,” Pa. Turnpike CEO Mark Compton said in a news release.

“But motorists must remember that it is their responsibly to drive safely and sensibly according to the traffic and weather conditions — especially when the pavement is slick from precipitation or when visibility is limited.”

State police say they’re planning strict enforcement of the 70 mph limit.

I drive the PA Turnpike a lot, but I must confess that this isn’t really the best news as far as I’m concerned. Unless this is the proverbial Trojan Horse in the sense that the state police are dressing this up as a very attractive carrot, when in reality they plan to turn it into a cash-raising stick via higher fines for speeding offenses, which is another story.

I drive the stretch from Downingtown to Trevose/Bensalem, Pa. a lot (don’t ask me the exit numbers; I committed the old ones to memory and can’t remember the news ones), and though there has been a bit of a break with traffic volume for the summer vacations, I envision this stretch of road turning into even more of a demolition derby when most of the drivers come back if a speed limit of 70 is ever put into place.

Yes, I’m frequently around 70 myself, and mainly I’m just keeping up with traffic flow. But in time, the “unofficial” speed will tick upward, probably closer to 80. And again, on that stretch of the turnpike, that is too damn fast of a speed to maintain, particularly when you consider this (first bullet). I am also old enough to recall when discussions about raising the speed limit also discussed whether or not that led to energy savings; no sign of that here that I can tell.

My motivation behind saying this is simple; I’m trying to keep people alive, including myself. And if that means I’m forced to drive, say, 5 to 10 miles slower on my route than I would if I were approaching, say, Harrisburg, then that’s a small price to pay as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, and something else – as long as I’m discussing the PA Turnpike, can we please speed it up a bit with building the I-95 connector near Bristol? Also, replacing the rest stop where the Street Road EZ Pass ramp is now located would be a good idea too. Can you please make it so?

Hugs…

Tuesday Mashup (6/24/14)

John Lott is back, opining on his favorite topic (here)…

(President) Obama also claimed: “The idea, for example, that we couldn’t even get a background check bill in to make sure that if you are going to buy a weapon you have to go through a fairly rigorous process so that we know who you are so that you can’t just walk up to a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon makes no sense.”

Obama ought to try purchasing a gun himself. He will realize it is not as easy as he thinks to buy a gun. No store in the entire United States can legally sell a semi-automatic gun without conducting a background check. Indeed, That (sic) has been the federal law for two decades now, since 1994.

Interesting (though not surprising) that Lott has nothing to say about background checks at gun shows – probably because there basically is no such thing for most of the states in this country (take a look at all of the red on the map shown here).

Also, as noted from here…

…when you compare the United States to nations like Britain and Japan, it becomes clear that firearm ownership contributes to America’s murder problem. The American firearm homicide rate is about 20 times the average among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries (excluding Mexico).

Harvard researchers Daniel Hemenway and Matthew Miller examined 26 developed countries, and checked whether gun ownership correlated with murder rates. They found that “a highly significant positive correlation between total homicide rates and both proxies for gun availability.” They also didn’t find much evidence that a higher rate of gun murders led to lower rates of other kinds of murder (i.e., stabbings).

Interestingly, these results tended to hold true even when you exclude the United States and its super-high homicide and gun-ownership rates. “More guns are associated with more homicides across industrialized countries,” Hemenway and Miller conclude.

Data from inside the United States suggests the same thing. A recent, highly sophisticated study found that, once you control for general crime rates and other confounding factors, “each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership” translated to a 0.9 percent increase in homicides. A meta-analysis — study of studies — found a strong consensus among researchers that access to guns correlated with higher homicide rates in the United States.

In another screed at Fix Noise (here), Lott complains about that danged “li-bu-ruul media” once again for not reporting that, according to Lott, the trend in this country is that school shootings are going down.

In response, here is a list from 2012 of school shootings in 36 other countries versus the U.S. – can’t imagine how even a life form as delusional as Lott could think that we have anything to brag about on that front.

Most recently, Lott launched a cowardly attack against the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America here.

Next, I posted a little while ago about the dustup between former Philly Pops artistic director Peter Nero (synonymous with Philly Pops for 33 years, as noted here) and Philly Pops president and chief executive Frank Giordano (who dumped Nero because he supposedly cost too much, even though Giordano ended up with a salary bump to $91K in the bargain as noted here – second bullet).

Well, it turns out that Nero let a little verbal faux pas slip out recently here, saying that “crooks dressed in $3,000 suits came in who didn’t know a thing about the music business” led to Nero’s departure.

Please note that Nero did not make personal reference to Giordano above, even though Nero later apologized for his remarks.

However, Giordano is suing Nero anyway for hurt fee fees, to the tune of $75,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

Really?

Giordano is yet another CEO type who managed to finagle his way to a position of influence over an artistic and cultural institution and pick whatever bones remained before it finally dies or very nearly succumbs (see Bill Marrazzo and WHYY, whichever millionaire owns it now and the Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News, etc.). And in this case, yelling “lawsuit” is the act of a desperate, despicable person who, while he seems to know the price of everything, truly knows the value of nothing, as the saying goes.

Further, I give you Larry Kudlow, who I admit has been busy lately (here)…

“Reinvigorating the leadership” is how one senior House staffer described the ascendency of Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who won a first-ballot victory for the position of GOP whip. The staffer went on to portray Scalise as not a member of the Washington establishment. Indeed, Scalise is a former chair of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the conservative caucus in the U.S. House. He has had a meteoric rise, and he is someone to be reckoned with.

..

…make no mistake about it, Steve Scalise is a genuine conservative. He was one of only 15 Republican House members to get a 100 percent voting designation by the American Conservative Union.

National Review contributor Quin Hillyer put it this way: “Scalise will be the most conservative GOP leadership member since Dick Armey.”

I’m sure Kudlow is right in those latter two sentences, by the way, which definitely isn’t positive as far as I’m concerned (I should note that the former whip was Kevin McCarthy, who will become majority leader upon Eric Cantor’s primary election loss).

In response, it should be noted that Scalise is buds with Darth Cheney (here), wants to fully “repeal and replace” “Obamacare” (here…no surprise either I realize), and thinks climate change is a hoax (of course – here). Also (and which is also predictable, I’m sure), Scalise has a bit of a “Koch” problem (here).

Yep, Not Your Father’s Republican Party continues to march Forward Into The Past (will the last GOP “moderate” to leave please turn out the lights?).

Continuing with unhinged U.S. House Republicans, I give you the following from Ed Whitfield (here)…

In 2009, President Obama traveled to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and announced at the Climate Change Conference that the United States would reduce our CO2 emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

The president did not consult with the Congress or any other job creating groups, but committed the citizens of America to his arbitrary goals. Acting unilaterally, by regulation and executive orders, has become commonplace with this administration.

Well, didn’t Dubya act “unilaterally” too here (and correctly, shocking as that sounds), when he “order(ed) EPA to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) from mobile sources, working in coordination with several other federal agencies” after The Supremes ruled that GHGs were indeed a pollutant and subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act (and yes, I’m sure I’ve pointed this out before)?

And as noted from here, on the positive economic impact of pursuing a common-sense energy agenda de-emphasizing fossil fuels…

• Climate mitigation investments will have huge economic returns on that investment ranging from energy efficiency reducing total energy bills to new economic activity surrounding the new technologies and businesses seeking to reduce our climate impact.
• Climate mitigation investments will have huge corollary benefits — such as improved human health (from reduced allergy risks to reduced emergency room visits with asthma attacks to reduced deaths due to fossil fuel pollution), improved visibility at national parks
• Climate mitigation will reduce the huge risks associated with climate change and will provide an insurance against the potential that climate change implications could be far worse than standard projections suggest (e.g., the risk that the modeling is erring on the too optimistic side).
• Climate mitigation is an investment that will provide huge returns — across a spectrum of economic, social, and environmental fronts.

It should also be noted that Whitfield and U.S. Senate Dem (and clean energy traitor) Joe Manchin came up with something called H.R. 3826/S. 1905, the Electricity Security and Affordability Act (here). It would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, authority the agency was accorded under the Clean Air Act, authority affirmed by two decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Of course, as noted here, Whitfield has received about $900,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry, so I would say that this is a handsome return on investment by those cretins, if nothing else.

One more thing – on the issue of climate, this tells us that we just experienced the hottest May on record…just sayin’.

Also, leave it to Matt Bai to find a high-profile Dem who opposes teachers unions (here)…

So you’re a liberal member of the 1 percent, and you’ve decided to wrest control of the Democratic agenda from change-averse insiders. You want to free the capital from the grip of powerful interest groups. You want to inspire a new set of policies to help America meet the challenges of a fast-transforming economy. Where do you turn for leadership and innovation?

To the teachers union, of course!

At least that’s how it seems to have played out at the Democracy Alliance, the group of superrich Democrats who have funneled more than half a billion dollars into liberal groups over the past decade. Earlier this month, the alliance announced that John Stocks, executive director of the National Education Association, would become the chairman of its board.

The move went largely unnoticed by the Washington media and even most Democrats, who could think of nothing at that moment other than the Memoir That Ate Everything in Its Path. But it tells you something — more than Hillary Clinton’s book does, certainly — about the direction of Democratic politics right now.

(For the record, let it be known that I don’t give a damn about Hillary Clinton’s memoir. And by the way, CNN, staying with HRC, when it comes to politicians and wealth, how come this is news in 2014, but this wasn’t news in 2000?)

Bai then uses the recent travesty of Judge Rolf Treu’s ruling on teacher tenure in California (a decision based on a totally made-up claim, as noted here) to attack teachers unions in general.

Having created this straw man, he then inflicts the following…

Heed the words of Nick Hanauer, a Seattle-based venture capitalist and school reform advocate, who wrote in a 2012 email that subsequently became public: “It is impossible to escape the painful reality that we Democrats are now on the wrong side of every education reform issue. … There can be no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind that the leadership of our party and most of its elected members are stooges for the teachers union, the ring leaders in all this nonsense.”

I don’t want to get too “lost in the woods” here, so I’ll try to sum up by saying that Bai opposes the direction taken by the group Democracy Alliance now that John Stocks, executive director of the National Education Association (and someone opposed by Hanauer) will become chairman of the board. Even though, as Bai puts it, “the problem here has nothing to do with Stocks personally, whom I’ve never met, and who has been described to me as a thoughtful and open-minded guy. It also has nothing to do with teachers generally, many of whom are nothing short of heroic, and who are struggling to adapt to the turmoil in their industry, same as the rest of us.”

Gee, wouldn’t it have been worth Bai’s time to try and reach out to Stocks and get a quote or two for this column?

Oh sorry, silly me – I forgot that it’s more important for Bai to push the “Dems caught in the grip of a supposedly hopelessly compromised teachers union” narrative in a column full of supposedly high-minded corporate media Beltway puffery than it is to write about real people and real issues.

And speaking of real people and real issues, I thought this letter was a good response to Hanauer, including the following…

…you say that it’s not the hard-working, dedicated teachers who are ruining education but rather their nasty, child-hating union. I grew up as an upper middle class white boy in the American South, where all of the white grownups had their favorite Black people—the cook, the person who looked after the kids, the guy who took care of the cattle for a share of the corn crop. But God forbid that one of those favorites be seen gathering on a street corner with Black people from out of town, or at an NAACP meeting, or having coffee with a union representative. At the first hint of any organized activity, our grownups would turn on their favorite Black people faster than a summer squall could dump an inch of rain on the pasture. Suddenly the individuals who had been so tender, wise, and trustworthy were scary, too stupid to know better, and not to be let into the house. Everybody loved the solitary black person, nobody liked it when they started to bunch up and talk crazy.

That’s kind of the way it is with teachers. Everybody loves a teacher, nobody likes the big, bad teachers’ union. As long as they’re staying after school to give the extra help to the kids who need it or reaching into their own pockets to pay for the supplies that the state doesn’t anymore, teachers are saints. But when they collectively advocate for decent wages, adequate health care, and working conditions that don’t erode by the minute they’re a threat to the moral fabric of the state.

And as long as I’m on the subject of education, I thought this was a good post about the battle in the Philadelphia school district between public and charter schools (yes, I’m sure there are excesses in public schools, but after just having paid for the education of a parochial school student who recently graduated, I can tell you that that’s hardly a panacea either).

Finally, this tells us that we recently observed the 50th anniversary of the disappearance of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers were trying to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi; their bodies were found 44 days later (the incident helped to propel the Civil Rights Act to passage – Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of the crime in 2005).

And though this event wasn’t as awful as the murders, it was still a defining moment that tried to legitimize, if not actually whitewash, that tragedy (and as noted here, past is definitely prologue from the party of The Sainted Ronnie R when it comes to race).

Monday Mashup (5/19/14)

This from about 10 days ago tells us about the 7 U.S. House Republicans named to the BENGHAZI!!! Clown Show Committee.

So, in no particular order, allow me to introduce them to you…

Susan Brooks (IN – 05)

Brooks seems to be a little smarter than some of the other numbskulls here; she’s been operating “below the radar” as far as I can see. All I could find was this item where she criticized the U.S. Senate Dems for supposedly not passing a budget, a popular talking point at the time echoed by Mikey the Beloved among others (more on him later)…in response, I give you this (and by the way…).

Jim Jordan (OH – 04)

Supported the shut down? Check. Supported the sequester? Check.

However, that doesn’t come close to telling Jordan’s story. As head of the Republican Study Committee, he has marshaled forces to oppose anything that looks even remotely like GOP compromise or deal-making with Number 44, being a perpetual thorn in the side of “Man Tan” Boehner, to the point where Jordan even scuttled the deal on the sequester and forced last year’s aforementioned government shut down (which was definitely the electoral “gift that keeps on giving” for the Dems, and even prevented a deal in which President Hopey Changey would have given away the proverbial store). All of this is noted in Tim Dickinson’s excellent Rolling Stone article here.

Mike Pompeo (KS – 04)

I already discussed Pompeo here, pointing out that, among other things, he’s utterly bought and paid for by Chuck and Dave Koch.

Martha Roby (AL – 02)

I predict (for whatever it’s worth) that, of the 7 Republicans participating in this farce, Roby will be the one who ends up with the most TV “face time” of the bunch and ends up getting talked about the most on the cable “news” channels.

That’s because, with the departure of “Moon Unit” Bachmann, the Teahadists are looking for a new “lightning rod” to congregate around and practice their faux indignation every chance they get. And had Marsha Blackburn been named to this cluster instead, then she would have solidified her own wingnut bona fides. But she wasn’t.

And Roby brings her own brand of “crazy, to wit…

She didn’t push back against a “birther” calling Obama a “communist despot” here.

“Stockholm Syndrome” Roby voted against the Violence Against Women Act here.

She introduced bill to eliminate overtime pay here.

And as we all know, more gun laws won’t solve the problem (here – removing my tongue from my cheek).

Update 10/22/14: Not sure how I forgot about this from Roby, but I did somehow (bullet #4).

Peter Roskam (IL – 06)

This guy might end up getting more face time than he deserves too…

Here, he basically lied about whether or not he knew former House Speaker Tom DeLay, aka, The Bugman (not a crime I realize, but I think it sends a message).

As of 2008, he’s received over $100 grand in oil money and has fought against clean energy, of course (here).

Roskam was under investigation for a $750,000 (!) trip to Taiwan in 2011 (also noted here that he failed to report about $103,000 in fundraising expenditures in ’05).

Here, Roskam co-introduced a bill to block federal funding of universities “engaging in a boycott of Israeli academic institutions or scholars.” (um, let me see here, where is that dictionary? “Free speech”…what exactly is that definition again?). And yes, Dan Lipinski definitely should know better.

Lynn Westmoreland (GA – 03)

Here, Dem U.S. House Rep John Lewis recently called on Westmoreland to step down since Westmoreland is in charge of the political strategy wing of the party, and Lewis sees a conflict of interest (with all due respect to Rep. Lewis, is there anything involved with this nonsense that isn’t all about “political strategy”?).

Here, Westmoreland sponsored a bill to post the Ten Commandments without actually knowing what they are (just say “oops,” and get out, you dweeb).

He was perfectly happy over setting up “faux” Democratic candidate web sites, which is a really chicken way to support your own party here.

He said a shutdown would be worth it because the government is full of “gangrene” here (real nice).

Westmoreland also said that NSA spying foiled 54 terrorist plots here (of course, Westmoreland supposedly couldn’t produce anything to verify that since it’s “classified” – why does this sound like the dinner scene with Angela Lansbury and James Gregory with the ketchup bottle in “The Manchurian Candidate”?).

And last but certainly least, I give you the chairman…

Trey Gowdy (SC – 04)

I guess it’s inevitable that I point this out (though Gowdy gets accidental honesty points here).

And let’s not forget how Gowdy and company are using BENGHAZI!!! to raise money, despite their faux protestations to the contrary (here).

And lest anyone wonder about whether or not they’ll be beating this proverbial dead horse for 2016, I give you this (here).

Also, Gowdy is apparently known for theatrics, as noted here (perfect for the Repugs).

In conclusion, in the question of whether or not the House should proceed with this, I give you career ambassador Thomas Pickering here (a welcome voice of sanity).

Next, I know I mentioned the sequester previously concerning Jim Jordan, but do you know that, according to Tom Coburn and the GAO, the sequester resulted in exactly one layoff (here)?

Notice there’s no discussion of the difference between a layoff and a furlough, to say nothing of a cut in services needed by millions of people in this country (this provides more information, and a rather lengthy list of agencies that would have been impacted by a prolonged shut down is here…not surprised that the wingnuts are trying to deflect blame on the shutdown considering this).

Further, I need to catch up on the latest with our wet noodle PA-08 U.S. House Rep (here)…

The numbers are eye-popping.

Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick, R-8, used them and some close-to-home examples Monday afternoon to drive home the importance of reducing the national debt to 150 eighth-graders at Council Rock’s Newtown Middle School.

The students of social studies teacher Joe Fabrizio are looking at debt and other issues as part of their studies in American history class.

The federal government debt is $17.5 trillion — which the congressman said is about $55,000 for every one of the 315 million people who live in the United States. The thought of passing on that debt to future generations is very troubling, he told students at the Newtown Township School.

“Spending money today and then handing it off is like going down to the Goodnoe Ice Cream Bar here in Newtown, buying a bunch of ice cream, and then handing the bill to the person next to you and walking out,” Fitzpatrick said. “You deserve to inherit a country with debt that, if not gone, is manageable and a future that is bright.”

Gosh, how courageous of Mikey to trumpet his conservative “cred” before a bunch of eighth graders. Talk about the “line of fire”…

In response, this tells us that the Treasury Department of the Obama Administration will pay down a portion of the national debt this quarter for the first time in six years.

And for the eleventy zillionth time, the main issue is JOBS! not debt. And Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein wrote a column here last November about the trade deficit, which is the one that truly matters, since easing it would both increase employment ultimately and reduce the budget deficit.

Also, Mikey recently informed us that he supports something called HR 4438, the American Research and Competitiveness Act, which (shockingly) was also supported by 62 House Democrats. The problem is that this makes a research and development tax credit for business permanent without the “offset” in spending that Mikey’s same-party pals clamor for when we’re talking about SNAP, an unemployment benefits extension, Medicare doctor’s reimbursements, the sequester overall, etc. (here and here).

One more thing…apparently (based on what I found at his web site), Fitzpatrick wrote a letter to Speaker “Man Tan” Boehner and Dem Leader Nancy Pelosi saying we should have a BENGHAZI!!! committee (again, stunning bravery to side so definitively with the overall consensus). Given that, I wonder if Mikey was one of the 206 Repug U.S. House reps who asked to be on the committee?

And what does that tell you about who he truly thinks he represents if the answer is Yes?

Finally, it needs to be emphasized that tomorrow is primary day in PA, and that means that, if you live in our beloved commonwealth, you need to vote early and often for Allyson Schwartz, running against the crowded Dem field of Tom Wolf, Rob McCord, and Katie McGinty (and running uphill, apparently, which makes it even more critical that Schwartz receive our support). Also, if you live in PA-13, Daylin Leach deserves your support in the primary for Schwartz’s seat.

Turning to PA-08, I’ve supported Kevin Strouse in the Dem primary all along, for what it’s worth, because I believe that he’s the best Democrat to go up against Mikey the Beloved in the fall.

I’m not going to tell you that I’ve spent equal amounts of time reading up on both Kevin and his primary opponent Shaughnessy Naughton. I do find much in common with many of their positions, though, which is good. However, it concerns me that Naughton, as nearly as I can tell, was the first to question whether or not Strouse is beholden to gas drilling interests in PA, as well as bringing up family campaign donations that, even if they were somehow illegal (and who knows?), are relatively piddling sums regardless (10 grand here, 10 grand there…). This forced Strouse to play defense kind of late in the game.

Is there anything inherently wrong with that? No. Politics ain’t beanbag, as somebody said. But let’s just say that it creates a perception for yours truly (along with endorsements for Naughton by the Philadelphia Inquirer – which, as far as I’m concerned, only cares about who they view as the weaker Dem winning the nod to make it easier for Mikey to win another term – and corpora-Dem Ed “Fix The Debt” Rendell…and yes, I would have the same concerns if Strouse received those endorsements).

To be perfectly honest with you, neither one has thus far run in a way that I would consider to be the way a progressive Democrat should run his or her campaign (again, Leach fits that template to a “T” as far as I’m concerned). Hopefully the winner will do something about that in the general election.

But I’m sticking with Kevin Strouse since I believe that he’ll do a better job of fighting for the causes that matter (economy/infrastructure, environment, common sense legislation from the U.S. House, etc.). And I hope you do also (to do what you can to help, click here).

Friday Mashup (5/9/14)

This from clownhall.com tells us the following (with the understated headline of “Guns Don’t Cause Gang Violence – Democrats Do”)…

Between Friday night, and Sunday evening, 28 people had been shot in Rahm Emanuel’s gun control utopia (Chicago). Which, unbelievably, shows an improvement over the previous weekend, which tacked on more than 40 gunshot victims to the city’s climbing statistics. And, heck, with the CPD’s recent scandal surrounding how they classify various crimes, it almost makes you wonder if these numbers are more “ballpark” figures than actual stats.

…

I mean, heck, (gun control) hasn’t exactly worked out that well so far, but why not double down? Right? The fact is, the failure of Liberalism has brought the city to its current state of deterioration. The Chicago model of unconstitutional restrictions on keeping and bearing arms has done little more than add fuel to the fire. Politicians, meanwhile, have been more than happy to ignore the easily identifiable, but politically tricky, origins of gang violence, and criminal activity.

Yeah, well, this is part and parcel of the wingnut caterwauling on guns I realize. However, did you know that the state of Illinois recently passed a concealed carry law, as noted here?

Well then, isn’t the Michael Schaus post proof, then, that concealed carry leads to more crime?

And as noted here, the NRA is pushing for a national concealed carry law that would override other more sensible state laws (the party of “state’s rights” strikes again, considering how “simpatico” the NRA is with the “party of Lincoln”). Which is all part and parcel of this (and by the way, Politifact strikes again on the whole “half true” thing – the U.S. has the highest gun casualty rate among “other affluent nations on a per capita basis,” so that settles it as far as I’m concerned).

Next, “The Pericles of Petticoat Junction” is back to inflict the following (here)…

The qualifications of a Tommy “Dude” Vietor or Ben Rhodes that placed them in the Situation Room during Obama-administration crises were not years of distinguished public service, military service, prior elected office, a string of impressive publications, an academic career, previous diplomatic postings, or any of the usual criteria that have placed others at the nerve center of America in times of crisis. Their trajectory was based on yeoman partisan PR work, and largely on being young, hip, and well-connected politically. I don’t think either of these operatives has a particular worldview or competency that would promote the interests of the United States. But they do talk well, know the right people, and are hip. Again, they have no real expertise or even ideology other than that.

(The “Dude” reference, for the uninitiated, has to do with Vietor pretty much laughing off more BENGHAZI!!! idiocy from Bret Baier of Fix Noise, which I think was definitely the correct response.)

So a certain V.D. Hanson is criticizing Vietor and Rhodes because of their ascent in the Obama Administration from a background of “yeoman partisan PR work.”

Well then, let’s take a look at Obama’s ruinous predecessor, as long as Hanson has opened that “can of worms”:

Longtime Bushie Karen Hughes was a “communications strategist” who, as a member of the White House Iraq Group, helped to sell Number 43’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq (here).

And speaking of the quagmire in Mesopotamia, former PR flak Dan Bartlett once said that his boss “never had a ‘stay the course’ strategy” here (liar).

When it comes to PR and marketing, though, I don’t think either Hughes or Bartlett can top Andrew Card, who rose to Chief of Staff and notoriously said here that “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” in response to the question of why Bushco started beating the drums for war in Iraq in earnest in September 2002.

Given this, I would say that, when it comes to “yeoman partisan PR work,” Vietor and Rhodes are chumps by comparison (and speaking of Iraq, more “fun” with Hanson is here).

Further, I think it’s time to take a look at some true revisionist wingnuttery on The Sainted Ronnie R, first from Michael Barone here…

Second-term presidents over the last generation have tried, with varying results, to achieve breakthroughs. Ronald Reagan, after cutting tax rates in his first term, called for further cuts combined with elimination of tax preferences that had encrusted the tax code.

House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski and Senate Finance chairman Bob Packwood — a Democrat and a Republican — achieved a historic breakthrough with the tax-reform legislation of 1986, thanks in part to intensive coaching from Treasury Secretary James Baker.

See, the point of Barone’s screed is that Obama isn’t being “bipartisan” enough for his liking, with Barone’s definition of “bipartisan” being, apparently, to get beaten up and let the Republicans do whatever they want (Barone lists other examples of supposed “bipartisanship” that got things done in Washington).

I guess that, living in the world of reality, it may not be necessary to point out at every opportunity to you, dear reader, that Number 40 raised taxes a dozen times, as noted here. However, since the other side is constantly trying to form reality to their twisted worldview, I believe that I must engage in this exercise.

And sticking with the decade in which Reagan took up space in An Oval Office, this post from The Daily Tucker discusses a TV program called “The Americans,” which I guess has to do with Soviet-era spies living in this country.

So what is this show about, exactly…

In one recent scene, for example, KGB agent Elizabeth goes off on a standard 80s liberal spiel about the Nicaragua war, complete with hypocritical sympathy for Catholic nuns and dissident journalists.

Well OK then – it looks like this Will Rahn person isn’t a big fan of ‘80s-era political activism in particular.

In response, I give you the following from here…

I first confronted this pattern while covering Reagan’s hard-line policies toward Central America. The lies started just weeks after Reagan’s 1980 election, when four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by government security forces in rightist-ruled El Salvador.

On the night of Dec. 2, 1980, two of the women, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan, drove a white mini-van to the international airport outside San Salvador. There, they picked up Ita Ford and Maura Clarke who had attended a conference in Nicaragua.

Leaving the airport, the van turned onto the road that heads into the capital city. At a roadblock, a squad of soldiers stopped the van and took the women into custody. After a phone call apparently to a superior officer, the sergeant in charge said the orders were to kill the women. The soldiers raped them first and then executed the women with high-powered rifles.

The atrocity was only one of hundreds committed each month by the Salvadoran security forces in a “dirty war” against leftists and their suspected supporters, a conflict that was more mass murder than a war, a butchery that would eventually claim some 70,000 lives. The Dec. 2 atrocity stood out only because Americans were the victims.

The proper response from U.S. officials would have seemed obvious: to join U.S. Ambassador Robert White in denouncing the brutal rape and murder of four American citizens. But the incoming Reagan foreign policy team didn’t see it that way; Reagan was on the side of the rightist Salvadoran military.

So, the rape-murder was treated like a public relations problem, best handled by shifting blame onto the victims. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s choice for United Nations ambassador, depicted the victims as “not just nuns. The nuns were political activists – on behalf of the [leftist opposition] Frente.”

Kirkpatrick’s implication was that it wasn’t all that bad to rape and murder “political activists.”

And as far as the “Fourth Estate” is concerned (here)…

To conceal the truth about the war crimes of Central America, Reagan also authorized a systematic program of distorting information and intimidating American journalists.

Called “public diplomacy” or “perception management,” the project was run by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who was assigned to the National Security Council staff. The explicit goal of the operation was to manage U.S. “perceptions” of the wars in Central America.

The project’s key operatives developed propaganda “themes,” selected “hot buttons” to excite the American people, cultivated pliable journalists who would cooperate and bullied reporters who wouldn’t go along.

The best-known attacks were directed against New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing Salvadoran army massacres of civilians, including the slaughter of more than 800 men, women and children in El Mozote in December 1981.

But Bonner was not alone. Reagan’s operatives pressured scores of reporters and their editors in an ultimately successful campaign to minimize information about these human rights crimes reaching the American people. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

The tamed reporters, in turn, gave the administration a far freer hand to pursue its anticommunist operations throughout Central America.

Despite the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and now-corroborated accounts of massacres and genocide, not a single senior military officer in Central America was held accountable for the bloodshed.

The U.S. officials who sponsored and encouraged these war crimes not only escaped any legal judgment, but remained highly respected figures in Washington. Reagan has been honored as few recent presidents have.

The journalists who played along by playing down the atrocities — the likes of Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer — saw their careers skyrocket, while those who told the truth suffered severe consequences.

And given the BENGHAZI!!! fever currently sweeping the “leadership” of the U.S. House, I think this is a timely article.

Continuing, it looks like VA head Eric Shinseki (who, once again, is a huge improvement over his Bushco counterpart) is in hot water, as noted here…

(Reuters) – Two Republican senators on Tuesday joined veterans groups in calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign amid claims that up to 40 people died while waiting for treatment in the U.S. veterans’ healthcare system.

Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, said the Veterans Affairs Department needed a “true transformation … from top to bottom.”

“I ask the secretary to submit his resignation and I ask President (Barack) Obama to accept that resignation,” Moran said on the Senate floor.

Assistant Senate Republican leader John Cornyn said: “The president needs to find a new leader to lead this organization out of the wilderness, and back to providing the service our veterans deserve.”

As noted here, Cornyn voted against a bill to provide $12 billion in medical, educational and job-training benefits for our veterans returning from the wars (to be fair, Moran voted Yes as noted here).

However, it’s not as if the Kansas senator doesn’t have his own baggage in these matters. He gave conditional-at-best support here to the military sexual assault bill sponsored by Dem Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Moran also voted against the Veterans with Disabilities Act (here), despite the request from former Kansas Sen. (and WWII-disabled vet, of course) Bob Dole that Moran and everyone else in the U.S. Senate support it.

The Reuters story also tells us the following…

The American Legion, the biggest U.S. veterans’ group, and Concerned Veterans for America called on Monday for Shinseki, a former Army general twice wounded in Vietnam, to step down.

I’m not going to take issue with The American Legion, but Concerned Veterans for America…hmmm…

Oh yeah – as noted here, that’s another “dark money” front group for Chuck and Dave Koch (kind of like “Concerned Women of America” who are apparently trying to torpedo a women’s history museum sponsored by Dem Carolyn Maloney and Repug Marsha Blackburn (!), as noted here, with “Moon Unit” Bachmann opposing it even though the plan is for her to be featured in an exhibit – way too funny).

Returning to the main topic, I don’t know if Gen. Shinseki should resign as head of the VA or not. However, I think it’s more than a bit hypocritical to blame only him for trying to clean up a mess originated by our prior ruling cabal (which he, among a very select few – and more’s the pity on that – actually stood up to, as noted here).

Finally (and speaking of war), I give you former Bushco U.N. rep John “Blow ‘Em Up” Bolton (here, with what you might call some “crackpot history” in concert with his claim that President Obama’s recent far east tour didn’t go well since Obama looked tired, or something)…

In 1932, Secretary of State Henry Stimson declared his “non-recognition” doctrine regarding Japanese aggression in China and subsequent annexations. Although politically symbolic, Stimson’s high-collared moralisms did nothing to deter further Japanese expansionism.

Years later, when President Roosevelt finally imposed sanctions that could actually inhibit Japan’s military, the increasing likelihood of war against the Nazis was apparent. Pearl Harbor followed, but one can ask if stronger U.S. Asia policies in the 1930’s might have caused a different result.

Yes, “one” can ask indeed if “one” were a total moron, I suppose. As noted from here…

In 1933, President (Franklin D.) Roosevelt proposed a Congressional measure that would have granted him the right to consult with other nations to place pressure on aggressors in international conflicts. The bill ran into strong opposition from the leading isolationists in Congress, including progressive politicians such as Senators Hiram Johnson of California, William Borah of Idaho, and Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. In 1935, controversy over U.S. participation in the World Court elicited similar opposition. As tensions rose in Europe over Nazi Germany’s aggressive maneuvers, Congress pushed through a series of Neutrality Acts, which served to prevent American ships and citizens from becoming entangled in outside conflicts. Roosevelt lamented the restrictive nature of the acts, but because he still required Congressional support for his domestic New Deal policies, he reluctantly acquiesced.

The isolationists were a diverse group, including progressives and conservatives, business owners and peace activists, but because they faced no consistent, organized opposition from internationalists, their ideology triumphed time and again. Roosevelt appeared to accept the strength of the isolationist elements in Congress until 1937. In that year, as the situation in Europe continued to grow worse and the Second Sino-Japanese War began in Asia, the President gave a speech in which he likened international aggression to a disease that other nations must work to “quarantine.” At that time, however, Americans were still not prepared to risk their lives and livelihoods for peace abroad. Even the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 did not suddenly diffuse popular desire to avoid international entanglements. Instead, public opinion shifted from favoring complete neutrality to supporting limited U.S. aid to the Allies short of actual intervention in the war. The surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 served to convince the majority of Americans that the United States should enter the war on the side of the Allies.

And as noted from here…

By 1940, the (Second Sino-Japanese) war descended into stalemate. The Japanese seemed unable to force victory, nor the Chinese to evict the Japanese from the territory they had conquered. But western intervention in the form of economic sanctions (most importantly oil) against Japan would transform the nature of the war. It was in response to these sanctions that Japan decided to attack America at Pearl Harbor, and so initiate World War II in the Far East.

OK, so, to review:

Sanctions against Japan were probably necessary in hindsight, but to try and make the argument that Roosevelt sought them too late and Pearl Harbor might have been prevented is ridiculous. If anything, if sanctions had been imposed earlier, an attack might have happened earlier (again, not saying that sanctions were wrong) when we would have been less adequately prepared to fight it than we were.

As the article states above, there was not enough of a “push back” against the isolationist sentiment Roosevelt faced across the political spectrum at home after World War I. And he needed those same senators opposing military action to support the New Deal.

I’m not a bit surprised, however, to find out that Bolton knows nothing about that period of history, given that he finished his column with the following (again, using this totally inaccurate reading to justify another attack on Number 44)…

In December, 1937, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of all people observed that, “It is always best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans but words.”

And the fact that Bolton would say that without a single word of acknowledgment of the price this country paid to defeat the Axis Powers in World War II (particularly repugnant as we approach Memorial Day) tells you how callow and ignorant he truly is.

Thursday Mashup (4/3/14)

I know I’m a little behind on this, but better late than never – I give you Billo the Clown and his latest rant against Dem U.S. House Rep Barbara Lee (here…and of course, I’m going to overlook for now his cowardly language about Lee being a “race hustler,” whatever that is)…

O’REILLY: Sure, so the right wing, all conservative Americans, we all use, all of us, not any exceptions, we all use, phrases that denigrate African Americans. Do I have that right Congressman? Do I have that right?

Alright, let’s take a look at Miss Lee’s history. In 2011 she accused the entire Republican party of trying to deny black Americans the right to vote… the entire party. Also in 2011, she released a book that said the Bush administration Hurricane Katrina relief, because mainly blacks were involved. That is, they didn’t want to rescue the blacks, they wanted them to drown, according to this Congresswoman.

When it comes to denying African Americans the right to vote, Billo is actually correct here – Lee did say that (here). And as noted here, she’s absolutely right (and when it comes to Republicans and race, there’s no apology from Billo or any of his pals for this).

And when it comes to Katrina, I give you the following quote from Rep. Lee (here)…

“If ever anyone doubted that there were two Americas, this disaster has made this division clear,” said Representative Barbara Lee, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. “The victims have largely been poor and black. The devastation from Hurricane Katrina only underscores the disastrous consequences of the Administration’s failure to take even the most basic steps to alleviate poverty in the United States.”

I can’t find anything factual to dispute that (though the notion that Dubya and co. wanted blacks to drown, or something, was put out there by Spike Lee, among others, with Lee making that great documentary to show exactly what happened).

Continuing with Billo…

In 2013, she branded Congressman Steve King a racist. She did the same thing to Bill Bennett, President Reagan’s former Secretary of Education. And Miss Lee claims she’s not a race hustler? How about pinhead Congresswoman? You like that better?

Again, I couldn’t find proof of that claim, but instead, I give you this concerning King and Lee…

In 2005, King successfully marshaled opposition to naming an Oakland post office after former Oakland city councilwoman and activist Maudelle Shirek because he believed that Shirek was “un-American.” After Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee accused him of McCarthyism, he said, “If Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy she would realize that he was a hero for America.”

On the House floor, King blasted the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus as “separatist groups,” and suggested that a “very, very urban senator, Barack Obama” provided “slavery reparations” through the USDA Pigford II settlement with black farmers.

During the presidential election, King maintained if Obama won that Al-Qaeda “would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.”

Actually, though, Billo is right again about Bennett (shocking, I know), but that is because he said that, if you abort every black baby, the crime rate would go down (here – I hope the repugnance of that remark speaks for itself).

I guess “racist” is in the eye of the beholder, huh?

Continuing with Billo…

Now this is a woman who is in the United States Congress, alright, who is flat out calling people with whom she disagrees, racists, whether they’re her colleagues, or me, or the entire Bush administration, or the entire Republican Party.

And this woman has the gall, the nerve, to get up there, alright, and then throw out terms like welfare queen. When has the Republican Party ever used that term? When have I ever used that term. The answer is, never, alright?

So not only is she a pinhead, a race hustler, she’s a liar. That’s who we have representing a California district… Barbara Lee.

As a literal quote from a Republican politician, be it The Sainted Ronnie R or anyone else, it’s true that the term “welfare queen” cannot be sourced (I was unable to do it anyway). However, I would argue that the context behind the term is far more important than the actual term itself (more is here and here).

I’ll tell you what – here is a link to about 378 posts from Media Matters that were the result of a search I conducted on the site for the terms “Bill O’Reilly” and “race.” And I’m sure more than a few of them will illustrate better than I can that he has no right to pontificate on that subject in particular.

Next, I thought it was a bit surprising to hear that Repug U.S. House Rep Mike Rogers is retiring for a job in right-wing radio, though it appears to be a pretty seamless fit of course (here).

And with that in mind, I think we should recall the following about the now-departing MI-08 rep:

Here is some interesting stuff about Rogers, his wife, and the so-called Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, otherwise known as CIPSA (about how Kristi Rogers would stand to benefit – more here)…and when it comes to CIPSA, here is what you need to know (fortunately, after passing the House of course, it appears to be stuck in the Senate)…

“It’s basically a privacy nightmare,” says Trevor Timm, a lawyer and activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “CISPA would allow companies to hand over private data to the government without a warrant, without anonymity, with no judicial review.”

Rogers said that those who oppose CIPSA are “teens in their basements,” or something, here (cute).

He said here that bombing Iran nuke sites wasn’t an act of war (oh, really?).

As noted here, Rogers didn’t share an intelligence notice from the White House in 2011 with fellow U.S. House members, leading to a vote to renew the Patriot Act in which at least 65 House members had “no way of knowing they were reauthorizing the ongoing creation of a database of the phone-based relationships of every American.”

He accused Edward Snowden of being a Russian spy here, with no proof whatsoever of course.

Rogers said here that the Obama Administration was “Mirandizing” terrorists on the battlefield, or something (yeah, remember that one?), which they weren’t of course, and so what if they were?

In conclusion, this tells us that Rogers infamously said, in essence, that you can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know about it (ugh).

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Mike.

Further, in the Repugs’ latest effort to find another ideological hero, it looks like U.S. Senate primary candidate Ben Sasse (the “e” is silent, apparently) of Nebraska has emerged as the Teahadist favorite over more mainstream (I guess) Republican candidate Shane Osborn (here).

(I should back up and note that both Sasse and Osborn are running to win the nomination as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in the contest to replace Mike Johanns, who is stepping down, with the campaign for November basically serving as a formality – I don’t want to imagine how pathetic it is to live in a place where the election is basically a choice between Republicans, and that is what we have here…love to be wrong.)

So let’s find out more about Sasse, then, shall we?…

As noted here, he basically was for Medicare Part D under Dubya (where Sasse was assistant to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, who was no prize either) before he was against it.

Here, Sasse wanted to move the nation’s capital to Nebraska (huh?).

And OF COURSE he was supported by fellow Teahadist Mike Lee (here).

As noted here, Sasse said the reason why so many were uninsured wasn’t because of poverty, but “job loss” (he also supports health care reform that makes coverage “portable”…which basically means that, despite what he says, he actually supports the ACA).

And as noted from here…

But (Sasse) also repeatedly criticized the president for pushing forward a bill (the ACA) without regard to cost, and without having a serious discussion with the public about what a new entitlement would mean for the nation’s budget deficit.

It still amazes me (though I guess it shouldn’t by now) how much Republicans absolutely refuse to accept the reality of the cost benefit towards reducing the deficit of the ACA (for starters, take a look at this).

Besides, as long as Sasse is going out about how bad the ACA supposedly is for his state…well, maybe he ought to look at this too (from here).

Update 5/1/14: Didn’t Dr. Dean say that Sasse was supposed to be reasonable or something (here)?

Continuing, I give you this from Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, complaining about how the dreaded “MSM” supposedly hates Republicans (appropriate for April Fools’ Day)…

California State senator (and, until last week, candidate for secretary of state) Leland Yee was well-known as an anti-gun activist. Then, last week, he was indicted for, yes, conspiring to smuggle guns and rocket launchers between mobsters and terrorists in exchange for massive bribes. Some highlights, as excerpted by San Francisco Magazine.

Yee told an FBI agent that, in exchange for $2 million in cash, he’d fill a shopping list of weapons, which he took personal responsibility for delivering, according to the indictment. He also allegedly “masterminded” a complex scheme bring illegal weapons into the country, agreeing to “facilitate” a meeting with an illegal arms dealer to arrange for the weapons to be imported via Newark, N.J. In arranging all of this, the indictment said, Yee relied on connections with Filipino terrorist groups who could supply “heavy” weapons, including the Muslim terrorists of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Yee allegedly noted that the Muslim terrorists had no reservations about kidnapping, extortion and murder.

This all sounds like news. You’ve got charges of huge bribes, rampant hypocrisy, illegal weapons and even a connection with foreign terrorists — and from a leading politician in an important state.

But — and here’s the part Hollywood would miss — outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted. The New York Times buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, “California: State Senator Accused of Corruption.” This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.

Yeah, don’t you hate it when a story about Dem corruption is totally ignored like that?

Just to compare and contrast, I did a Google search on “Leland Yee” and “guns” and generated about 11 million hits, which hardly qualifies as ignoring a story as far as I’m concerned (here).

Then, I did a search for Chris Christie and the 9/11 artifacts he tried to give to NJ mayors to win endorsements in last year’s election (which is far worse in my opinion) and came back with about 1 million hits (here).

But of course, Reynolds would have us believe that the media hates Republicans.

Reynolds goes on some more in his screed for “America’s Fish Wrap” about how the Kermit Gosnell stuff supposedly wasn’t covered (Gosnell is the Philadelphia “doctor” who ran an abortion clinic and was convicted on 3 counts of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison).

Oh, please (as noted here, the NY Post, Rupert’s vanity rag, and the Murdoch Street Journal were late to the proverbial party on this, which means that conservatives forfeit the right to complain on this as far as I’m concerned).

Of course, Reynolds has been a paid propagandist for the right his whole career, such as it is, including this hilarious moment when he predicted doom and gloom for Number 44 in 2010.

Finally, I don’t want to devote a lot of time to the latest from “Pastor” Gerson of the WaPo here, in which he reviews the films “Noah” and “God Is Not Dead,” thus giving himself the opportunity to flaunt some imagined moral bona fides once again (I thought this was a good response).

As long as I’m on the subject, though, I want to take a minute or two and note that your humble narrator recently visited the nearby Regal Cinema in these parts with the teenaged one to watch “Noah” (Sunday, homework done, bored and couldn’t wait for some of the upcoming summer blockbusters, etc.).

(And by the way, two adult tickets for a Sunday show were $24, and a medium popcorn and two “medium” drinks, with each “medium” cup holding about a half a gallon of soda, were $19. And that was less expensive than playing the concession games afterwards, including pinball, Alien Hunter, etc. Thankfully, he appears to have left that phase behind. Also, I’m going to get into the plot, which I think everybody knows at this point now anyway.)

So the movie starts at about 8:30 after all the promotions and coming attractions, even though the advertised start time was 8:10 (I must admit, though, that the previews for “Spider-Man 2” and an upcoming movie on James Brown looked pretty cool). And of course, since we’re talking about a pic with Russell Crowe, there has to be a villain in the story. And it turns out to be someone named Tubal Cain, who kills Noah’s (Crowe’s) father when Noah is a boy.

Well then, Noah grows up, and the next thing you know, he’s married to Jennifer Connelly and they have three boys (I am honestly concerned about her – every time I see her in a role, whether it’s “Dark City” or “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” she looks more and more gaunt; I hope she stocked up on some carbs after she finished making the picture). And they come across a little girl who they take in after a battle, and Connelly looks at her belly wound, and says “She’ll never have children,” which is kind of a miraculous diagnosis in a way I guess.

Soon enough, they’re trying to escape the bad guys, and they end up journeying to this land where (as it turns out) giant rock people live, and they put Noah and his family into a pit. It turns out that these rock creatures are the “watchers” who were turned to stone by “the creator” when he flipped out after Adam and Eve took a bite of the apple (though the “watchers” were apparently punished for something else). Even though the watchers/rock things threaten mankind with destruction, Noah persuades them to help and they wreak havoc to protect him (I didn’t know somebody stuck “The Book of Michael Bay” into the middle of Genesis).

And when Noah needs help to build the Ark after seeing visions of a huge flood in dreams, the creatures take care of that too (leave it to “Optimus Shale and the Autorocks” to fulfill Biblical prophecy…and no, I didn’t come up with that one).

Also, about the little girl with the stab wound…she grows up to be Emma Watson, and Anthony Hopkins (Noah’s father) puts his hand on her wound and she miraculously becomes fertile again (didn’t even need Ron or Harry to wave their wands – tee hee). She also spends just about the entire movie crying also – maybe her agent didn’t get a good deal on the residuals.

Because it’s a Biblical epic, you can count on a mega-battle scene as Tubal Cain and his minions try to storm the Ark (using spears forged in a fire pit – um, didn’t all of that technology come a few thousand years after this?). Also, I swear I saw one of the minions running around with a helmet and visor, kind of like the one that kept falling in front of Terry Jones’s face in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” And Noah ends up flipping out when he finds out that Ila, Noah’s stepdaughter (Watson) is pregnant, since Noah believes that God tells him that man must not repopulate the earth, and Noah thinks he has to kill Ila’s two infant daughters (Noah eventually relents and lets the babies live, getting so depressed because he thinks that he failed God that he ends up on a massive bender, drinking wine from seashells in a cave – “The Hangover, Part 4” maybe?).

To sum up, I think that “Noah” is pretty good Hollywood-style entertainment (including some truly ground-breaking CGI stuff going on, though I wonder how that all will translate to the small screen on DVD). But as anything close to a literal interpretation of the Bible (and why would you be looking for that here anyway?), the movie, in my opinion, is all wet (sorry…couldn’t resist).

Tuesday Mashup (3/4/14)

This doesn’t matter to our corporate media (hell, they’re his cheerleaders, as we know).

Neither does this.

Nor does this.

Nor this.

Nope, our dear cousins at the news networks with initials for names (not counting the media wing of the Republican Party, of course) will ALWAYS “ride the tire swing” on behalf of you-know-who, as noted below (“EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JOHN McCAIN!!! WHAT PEARLS OF WISDOM WILL HE EMPART NEXT???).

At this point in his career in public life, the senior Republican U.S. senator from Arizona is nothing but a pitiable shill for the warmongers and the “one percent” (seeing as how we live in the era of angry millionaires). And he will be forever bitter that a Democrat resides in An Oval Office as a result of the 2008 election instead of he and Caribou Barbie (perish the thought).

And regardless of what he ever says, he will NEVER be called out by the Beltway political-media-industrial complex for it.

Update 3/6/14: Shocked? Not me.

Next, it’s time for a trip through the looking glass again, as noted here…

(Last month), Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum became the latest AG to abdicate her duty to defend (a state ban on gay marriage). And earlier (in February), a federal judge struck down Virginia’s traditional definition of marriage after Attorney General Mark Herring refused to defend it.

Herring’s defense of his abdication was typical of these attorneys general. He said he was putting Virginia “on the right side of history.” But the job of an attorney general is law not history, and Herring and the other AGs have failed at that job.

Herring put himself on the wrong side of the Virginia constitution, which bans same-sex marriage, the wrong side of recent Supreme Court rulings and most importantly, on the wrong side of his sworn duty to defend Virginia’s laws.

While he was at it, Herring also violated his ethical obligation to zealously represent his clients — the people of Virginia — who enacted the gay marriage ban through a 2006 ballot initiative.

And by the way, you can include PA’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane on the list of attorneys general choosing not to defend the indefensible (IMHO) DOMA for their state/commonwealth.

The author of this piece is Curt Levey, and I believe he has a rather interesting interpretation of what laws the Supreme Court should defend and which ones they shouldn’t (don’t worry – I’m being sarcastic). For, as noted here, The Supremes have already ruled against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which predicates the actions of attorneys general like Herring and Kane. Also, Levey tried to argue that the High Court should overturn the Affordable Care Law, and, in the process, ignored the fact that it has to do with interstate commerce (the Court of Hangin’ Judge JR has observed throughout that such a law is covered under the so-called “commerce clause” of the Constitution – if nothing else, this shows that Levey doesn’t truly have the understanding of the law that he claims to have…here).

As noted here from about four years ago, though, there really is no need to give Curt Levey the time of day at a reputable news site anyway.

Further, Repug U.S. Senator Rand “Fake Ophthalmologist” Paul of Kentucky, in pursuit of another way to try and burnish his wingnut bona fides, is opposing Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination as the next Surgeon General (here)…

Citing his work in political advocacy pushing for gun control and Obamacare, (Paul) threatened…to place a hold on President Obama’s Surgeon General Nominee.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Paul explained his objection to Dr. Vivek Murthy, Obama’s choice for the position.

…

According to Paul, Murthy’s “primary policy goals” have been pushing stricter gun control laws and Obamacare, and that Murthy refers to “guns as a public health issue on par with heart disease and has diminished the role of mental health in gun violence.”

I’m not going to deal with Paul’s typically idiotic claim that Dr. Murthy “diminished the role of mental health in gun violence.” Instead, I’ll ask the following question; I wonder if Paul knows that Dr. C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General under The Sainted Ronnie R, thought gun violence was a public health issue also (here)?

And in defense of Dr. Murthy, I give you the following (here, from Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association)…

We know that Dr. Murthy values prevention. As a member of the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health, he is already working to give sound advice that brings together every facet of government — from education and defense to housing and transportation — to ensure health is considered across the full spectrum of national programs and policies.

He has demonstrated that he is a mature leader of men and women. As co-founder and president of Doctors for America, he brought together 16,000 physicians and medical students to advocate for quality, affordable health care for all. He has also been a leader in HIV prevention and education as president of Visions Worldwide. And finally, we know that Dr. Murthy has the bright mind to take the latest science and turn it into better health outcomes. He is well trained and as an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he’s successfully practiced at some of our nation’s most prestigious health care institutions.

Dr. Murthy has accomplished much in his 37 years. Because of his young age, however, some might question his readiness for such an important position. However, our nation has been privileged to have had many such successful young health innovators over the years. For example, Dr. Vivien Thomas helped devise the procedure to correct the “blue baby syndrome”; Dr. Robert Jarvik invented one of the first artificial hearts; Dr. Joseph Murray performed the first human kidney transplant; and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was one of the key discovers of HIV as the virus that causes AIDS.

These groundbreaking health advancements, which have saved millions of lives, were made possible by four leaders younger than Dr. Murthy. Competence, not age, should be the major criteria for this important position.

Oh, and by the way, can we please dispense with this fiction that “Dr.” Paul is actually a certified ophthalmologist by a reputable board, OK (here)?

Continuing, did you know that “liberals are destroying the planet,” according to Ed Rogers? Why, he says so here, in a column where he posits that there should be a category of individuals who believe or, more precisely, don’t believe in climate change called the “Prudent Rationals” (yep, it gets pretty thick here quickly, if you know what I mean)…

“The Prudent Rationals” would be comprised of those whose attitudes comport with something like the following: They are generally respectful of the scientific community and are eager to listen to mainstream scientists and researchers. They want to hear from legitimate experts who acknowledge the variables, the uncertainties and, importantly, the mistakes and errors of climate science so far. This group could support a prudent plan to produce measurable benefits, but only if the plan were truly global in scope and the cost seemed to be proportional to the outcome. The “Prudent Rationals” believe it is reasonable to accept that there are consequences for continually pumping gases into the atmosphere. And it seems right that one generation should leave the planet better than they found it for the next generation. But we need to be realistic about technical science and political science. If we can’t act globally to limit these gases, we should be focusing on local pollution, not on plans that unilaterally wreck our economy and impoverish millions – if not billions – for nothing.

Laurence Lewis of Daily Kos answered all of this idiocy pretty well here, I thought (and for something that is supposed to be nothing more than some dastardly liberal plot, it should be noted that the CIA and the National Academy of the Sciences are going to spend about $630,000 to “study how humans might influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate, and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering attempts” – here, so clearly, the “spooks” believe in the climate crisis, wouldn’t you say?).

After reading the WaPo column, though (and managing to keep down my lunch in the process), I got a little curious about Ed Rogers, so I decided to do a bit of investigating. And it turns out that, along with former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, he runs the uber-lobbying firm BGR (here). For more information, this tells us more about the lobbying activities of BGR (no big “get” here I know, but I still think it’s interesting to see how wide their footprint is, as it were).

It should also be noted that Rogers is an old hand when it comes to taking shots at Democrats, trying to impugn then-Senator Barack Obama in his run for the White House in 2006 (here). And after peaking in revenue in ’07, the firm apparently saw a 25 percent drop up to ’10, blaming Obama for it of course, as noted here; however, I’m sure the item below didn’t help with the firm’s revenues either (here)…

This time around though, (Barbour, the “B” in BGR) is starting his new political and personal business projects at a sensitive moment. The former governor is also trying to put out a political firestorm in Mississippi that was sparked by 215 pardons — including 17 to convicted murders — he issued in his last days in office earlier this month.

The new GOP governor, Phil Bryant, has indicated he would back a constitutional amendment to limit the pardoning powers of the governor; and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Jim Hood, called Barbour’s sweeping pardons “an absolute tragedy for the victims involved in each of these cases.”

The high-decibel attacks on Barbour in the Magnolia state have sent shock waves up and down K Street where Ed Rogers, one of his partners at BGR, last week scrambled to contain the fallout.

According to sources, Rogers urged Barbour to move quickly to tamp down the controversy by giving his own full account of what he did and why he did it, lest it hurt Barbour’s effectiveness and image — and perhaps the firm’s lucrative bottom line.

But not to worry – I’m sure Rogers will end up just fine; he apparently “landed on his feet” in the manner noted below (here)…

TRENTON — A Washington lobbyist whose firm represents the Florida company that won the lion’s share of New Jersey’s debris removal work after Hurricane Sandy will host a fundraiser for Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election later this month.

The event will take place at the Virginia mansion of Ed Rogers, chairman of BGR Group, which lobbies members of Congress on behalf of AshBritt Inc. — a firm that has come under scrutiny because of a lucrative no-bid emergency contract it was awarded in the days after the hurricane.

The lobbying company was co-founded by Republican Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor who helped shepherd Christie’s career and was one of the people who recommended the state use AshBritt.

None of what I have cited here is illegal on the part of Rogers and his firm as far as I know. But I wouldn’t complain that anybody is “destroying the planet” if their own activities don’t exactly pass the smell test either.

Finally, I haven’t checked up our wet noodle PA-08 U.S. House Rep for a little while, so I need to bring everyone up to date a bit on Mikey the Beloved’s recent adventures (here, with a heaping helping of whining about supposedly “job-crushing” regulations, or something – I was tipped off to this when I received Mikey’s Email newsletter)…

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8) delivered letters and copies of the film “Barrel of a Gun” to Senate offices in the nation’s capital Friday in an effort to educate Senators regarding the circumstances and events surrounding the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu Jamal. The president’s nominee to head the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Debo Adegbile, led efforts to recruit attorneys to pervert the justice system after Jamal’s just conviction for his heinous crime.
…

Fitzpatrick has ardently opposed the nomination of Adgebile (sic) since its announcement in early January, writing to the president and members of the Senate Judiciary committee and calling the recommendation ‘confounding.’ Prior to the Senate Judiciary’s 10-8 party-line approval of Adegbile’s nomination, Fitzpatrick spoke with Senators and urged them to consider the Adegbile’s involvement with the celebritization of Mumia through his legal representation.

Even by Mikey’s low standards, this is pretty repulsive stuff (and nice typo, by the way). As noted here…

On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the 75 undersigned organizations, we are writing to indicate our strongest possible support for the nomination of Debo P. Adegbile to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Adegbile is a tireless advocate, a skilled litigator, and a well-respected member of the legal community who is extraordinarily qualified for and suited to this position.

Mr. Adegbile is one of the preeminent civil rights litigators of his generation. He is also a consensus builder. Mr. Adegbile has earned respect and admiration from a bipartisan set of colleagues, lawyers, and leaders, including former Solicitors General Paul Clement and Drew Days, because of his principled and measured approach to issues.

Throughout his career, Mr. Adegbile has distinguished himself as a highly effective and respected advocate who achieved successes both inside and outside the courtroom. The son of immigrants who worked his way from poverty to the top of the legal profession, Mr. Adegbile is a steadfast voice for equality and opportunity for all Americans. [Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 1/7/14]

Also, while I will never defend Mumia Abu-Jamal, I think it’s also pretty safe to say that he’s still entitled to a legal defense, and I don’t see how representing Abu-Jamal constitutes a “celebritization (word?) of Mumia through his representation” Besides, as the Media Matters post tells us…

When he was a partner at Hogan Lovells, the letter (cited above) noted, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. helped represent Florida death row inmate John Ferguson, convicted in the murder of eight people.

On top of all of this, I thought this was a well-done editorial by the Inky (shocking, I know) about Debo Adegbile, in which the paper accused anyone trying to connect him with Abu-Jamal of “blatant demagoguery” which was quite rightly called “sickening” (Mikey wasn’t mentioned, but Sen. Pat “No Corporate Tax” Toomey was).

In his newsletter, Fitzpatrick also tells us that about 11 million small business employees will see their premiums increase as a result of the Affordable Care Law. Of course, Fitzpatrick doesn’t tell us that 6 million small business employees will see their premiums drop (as noted here – also, we don’t know what kind of a percentage both of those numbers represent against everyone projected to enroll on the exchanges across the country).

And in conclusion, Mikey tells us with his typical whining petulance that “Congress makes the laws” here (I don’t know who this Dr. Larry Kawa is, and I don’t care – witness Mikey’s laser-like focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs”) and President Obama has no right to delay implementing the employer mandate in supposed unilateral executive fashion (sarcasm mode off).

However, as noted here from last August…

The strategy shifted again last month after the Obama administration announced a one-year delay of the law’s employer mandate. Boehner seized on the move to argue that the White House was giving a break to businesses but not to individuals by delaying only one of the two major mandates. He and Cantor quickly scheduled votes to delay both the employer and individual mandates, and they cheered when more than 20 Democrats voted for each bill.

So, while Fitzpatrick has called for a delay in implementing the individual mandate (which I ALSO don’t agree with, as noted here), he is having a typical hissy fit by accusing President Obama of trying to make his own law, or something, when in reality, Mikey’s own House congressional “leadership” had scheduled a vote to delay the employer mandate MONTHS AGO!

With all of this is mind, I would ask that you click here to respond (and I would like to point out the following to the Kevin Strouse campaign – if you expect to have any hope of pulling away enough independent voters in PA-08 from the “trending R” column to win election in November, then you should start pointing out stuff like this instead of me…trying thinking about that before you hit me up again for a campaign donation).

Friday Mashup (2/21/14)

Jonah Goldberg, apparently vying for the title of Most Idiotic Pundit in the Universe, inflicts the following while bashing Number 44 overall for a variety of alleged reasons (here)…

The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to treat carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” is an outrageous expansion of executive power. But Obama (didn’t) tout that as a bullet point (last week at a Democratic retreat); he let the EPA take the political heat for that decision a while ago.

So much stoo-pid, so little time – as noted here…

In March 2012 the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft rule limiting carbon pollution from new power plants. This standard was promulgated in response to the 2007 Supreme Court ruling requiring the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act if it found that carbon dioxide emissions endangered public health and the environment. The agency published such a finding in 2009, noting that carbon-pollution-associated climate change will increase the frequency of unusually higher temperatures and heat waves.

Increased temperatures can increase the risk for formation of ground level ozone or smog. Breathing ozone may lead to shortness of breath and chest pain; increased risk of asthma attacks; increased susceptibility to respiratory infections; need for medical treatment and for hospitalization for people with lung diseases, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; and premature death. Children and senior citizens are most vulnerable to harm from smog.

The Environmental Protection Agency held several listening sessions while drafting the proposal, held two public hearings on the proposed rule, and extended the comment period to 73 days. Almost 3 million comments were sent to the agency in favor of reducing carbon pollution from both new and existing power plants—a record for an Environmental Protection Agency rule proposal. The agency is now in the midst of finalizing its rule.

Actually, based on this, the EPA finalized the rule last December 19th; carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is “decades old,” though apparently it is still a relatively expensive technology (don’t know enough to say whether or not it should be subsidized by the federal government or if it is already, but if it isn’t, why not?).

Of course, if Goldberg had an inclination towards actual journalism instead of hack punditry, he might be disposed to try and find that out (yes I know – if I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring…).

Next, I give you the latest from Repug U.S. Senator John Barrasso via Fix Noise in the “Let’s Bash Number 44” slug fest (here, opining about the fifth anniversary of the stimulus last Monday)…

President Obama said that he was going to use the money to fund “shovel-ready” construction projects. Many of those projects stalled because of burdensome red tape, and Washington regulations. A couple of years later, the president even joked that “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

In response, to give you an idea of how many jobs were saved or created the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, I would ask that you read the following from here.

And what have Barrasso and his fellow U.S. Congressional Republican pals done in response (aside from saying that the stimulus “failed” even though they patted themselves on the back for bringing stimulus funds back to their states or congressional districts, as noted here)?

Obama’s jobs plan blocked in the Senate in October 2011 (here).

A $60 billion infrastructure spending bill was also blocked in the Senate in November 2011 (here – gee, ya’ think that would have helped with repairing our roads crumbling from this awful winter? And do you remember this stellar related moment?).

Obama’s 2011 American Jobs Act was also blocked in the U.S. House (here).

A veterans’ jobs bill was also blocked in the Senate in September 2012 (here).

Of course, an extension of unemployment benefits that would create 2 million jobs was also blocked (here).

Here’s a more comprehensive list of legislation backed by Obama that has been blocked by Republicans in Congress (and here is another typical Barrasso move).

Continuing, I give you the latest from the perpetually angry Brent Bozell (here)…

Media liberals are howling at the apparent injustice of the “anti-Clinton” Washington Free Beacon website, which has dared to paw through old Hillary Clinton history. The hypocrisy is stunning. Let us recall the avalanche of mean-spirited and sleazy “fair game” the networks assembled for us just a few years ago in the last election cycle.

Bozell then goes on to list a whole bunch of imagined media slights involving Republicans, which I won’t bother to address here lest this entire subject grow too tiresome than it already is. However, I’m going to say something about this because 1) Without giving away the game too much, I think it’s safe to say that we’re going to be dealing with an upcoming presidential election cycle involving Hillary Clinton, and 2) Our wingnut brethren, if Bozell is any indication, have already decided to start dumping on the former First Lady, Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York regardless (it’s ALWAYS good sport for conservatives to dump on the Clintons, which, if nothing else, tells you how pitiable these people truly are).

Bozell also mentioned something about the Washington Free Beacon (whatever that is). In response, this Media Matters post tells us that the “Free Beacon” relied on a report from a group called OPSEC to attack Hillary Clinton – this tells us more about the group:

…OPSEC, a right-wing group made up of retired intelligence and Special Forces operatives, has partisan ties and a history of disingenuously attacking the Obama administration. The group “first surfaced during the 2012 presidential campaign,” when they produced a 22-minute film and TV ads accusing President Obama of “seeking political gain from the May 2011 military operation that killed Osama bin Laden.” (PolitiFact rated the claims made in the ads as “false” and “mostly false.”) Key members of the group have current and former affiliations with the Republican Party, and Reuters uncovered that more than a quarter of OPSEC’s 2012 funding was raised by Campaign Solutions, a political consultancy which represents Republican candidates.

OPSEC’s president, Scott Taylor, has also previously been accused of “shady campaign tactics” in his multiple bids for Republican state office, and as Business Insider noted, the group’s maneuvers reveal they are more interested in attacking President Obama and the Obama administration than promoting any national security interests. According to OpenSecrets, OPSEC spent almost $500,000 in the 2012 election cycle on “electioneering communications” alone.

Official investigations have found Secretary Clinton, the Obama administration, and the military did everything within their power to rescue the Americans stationed in Benghazi at the time. The official inquiry into the State Department’s role conducted by the independent, nonpartisan Accountability Review Board found that security at Benghazi was inadequate and offered recommendations for State to prevent future attacks, all of which are being implemented, but found Clinton personally blameless.

Yes, having to counter the nonsense from Bozell and his ilk is time not spent trying to persuade anyone still on the fence at this point why they should vote for a Democrat in the upcoming and all future election cycles. But this is an exercise that must be done, since the “noise machine” will crank up ever louder, immune to facts and reason as always.

Further, I have to comment on the following here (staying with clownhall.com, and apparently still in need of an editor)…

More than half of Americans oppose Obamacare and 56% claim the law is more about bolstering government control than it is about helping individuals gethealth care (sic).

The millions kicked off their insurance certainly do not find the policy freeing, neither do millennials forced to pay for healthcare feel liberated.

Obamacare is precisely the type of overbearing government policy that the Founders would have fought against…

Oh? So the Founding Fathers would have opposed “Obamacare”?

This tells us about the U.S. Marine Hospital, founded in 1798, under President John Adams (it eventually became our Public Health Service, led by the Surgeon General). And as noted here, the hospital was also supported by Thomas Jefferson, hardly an acolyte of “big gumint.”

And did I tell you that Benjamin Franklin co-founded the nation’s first public hospital offering free health care, as noted here (which became Pennsylvania Hospital)? Gosh, I didn’t know our founding fathers were such a bunch of damn socialists (removing my tongue from my cheek).

As long as I’m on this subject, though, I should point out that this tells us that the number of health care repeal votes in the U.S. House under Republican Party “leadership” has now ballooned to 47. And that means that I’ve fallen behind a bit on my count, based on my pledge to highlight a different U.S. House Republican for each repeal vote:

Here is the tally so far:

#1 – #31 is here.
#32 – #40 is here.
#41 – #42 is here.

So without any more ado, let’s pick up the count, shall we?

#43 – Mark Meadows (NC – 11)

As far as I’m concerned, Meadows is infamous for only one act, but it was a real doozy, and that would be last year’s government shut down; as noted here, he was more responsible for it than any other person in the U.S. Congress.

And just to refresh our memories, these in part were the results:

Disadvantaged women and infants relying on nutrition programs, as well as anyone relying on Head Start, individuals with disabilities and people needing heating assistance were all hurt (here).

Processing of veterans’ compensation, pension and education benefits was delayed; the shutdown was projected to drain about $10 billion out of our economy (here).

Passport applications were delayed as well, and shutting down sites in the U.S. Parks service hurt tourism as well as related businesses relying on tourist dollars, OSHA halted inspections, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission halted investigations of fraudulent trading practices – processing of Pell Grants and student loan assistance was also slowed (here).

FEMA ended up furloughing 86 percent of their employees during the height of the hurricane season (here).

So yeah, if Mark Meadows does absolutely nothing else of consequence one way or the other for the remainder of his public life, he will always be remembered for the utterly ruinous 2013 government shutdown, as well he should.

#44 – Renee Ellmers (NC – 02)

What a prize of an elected official…

Speaking of the shut down, Ellmers voted for it of course, but when asked why she wouldn’t donate her salary, said “I need my paycheck” here (as Laura Clawson says, as if Head Start teachers don’t?).

Oh, and an unsecured AR-15 rifle was stolen from her home here (smooth move).

Here, she introduced a “bill” to provide “rights” to disabled (injured and amputee) veterans that they already have.

As noted here, Ellmers introduced a resolution to honor Jesse Helms (ding ding ding! We have a winner in the “Wingnut of the Week” contest!).

Also, I’m not the biggest fan of Clay Aiken either, and I know politics ain’t beanbag as somebody once said, but I thought it definitely showed a lack of class on her part to mock his singing here.

#45 – Reid Ribble (WI – 08)

This tells us that a petition with 120,000 signatures was delivered to Ribble’s office telling him not to include Social Security cuts in fiscal discussions last year, which Ribble intended to do regardless of the fact Social Security does not contribute to the federal deficit…remember the whole “chained CPI” thing, which apparently has come around again as an issue as noted here?

And speaking of Social Security, he wants anyone relying on that popular federal program to get it in the proverbial neck, as it were, as noted here.

In a truly guttural move, Ribble actually scolded Sister Simone Campbell for asking government to help the poor (nice).

Here, Ribble ducked out early from a jobs fair to attend a campaign fundraiser (what a swell guy).

Ribble said here that government shouldn’t borrow, even though he personally carries a couple of hundred thousand in debt (the latter isn’t a crime, but don’t be so damn two-faced about it).

And OF COURSE he’s a member of the “Koch Caucus” (here).

#46 – Steve Stockman (TX – 36)

I don’t know if Stockman is the biggest goof ball on this list or not, but if he isn’t, he’s certainly in the top two…

There’s lots of stuff on Stockman from this great post – take your pick.

He also thinks Ted Nugent is a patriot (here).

Stockman invited the rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask noted here to perform in his district (nice).

He apparently went missing also (here), but he turned up later (here), thinking the whole “missing” thing was a joke apparently (of course, if you want to read something really funny, take a look at this…wonder if the Teahadists will do the U.S. Senate Democrats another favor?).

As noted here, Stockman is also apparently a fan of that show “Duck Dynasty,” along with a lot of others I know (in response, I give you this…anyone who buys into that show is a total rube).

Update 3/4/14: HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

#47 – Randy Neugebauer (TX – 19)

Yes, it’s true – as the picture shows, any discussion of Neugebauer has to begin with his truly infamous episode where he yelled at a U.S. Park Ranger for closing the WWII memorial during the shut down his party initiated (here).

He also yelled out “baby killer,” presumably at former Dem U.S. House Rep Bart Stupak, during Stupak’s speech on the House floor at about the same time as the vote for the Affordable Care Law in 2010, which is truly idiotic but particularly in the case of pro-lifer Stupak (here)…and yes, he apologized.

Oh, and when asked here, he wouldn’t provide a copy of his birth certificate, even though Neugebauer is a “birther” himself, as noted here (uh oh).

Neugebauer was also one of the House Repugs who voted for farm aid (receiving about $4 grand in subsidies) while also voting to cut food stamps (here…also, he’s very definitely a member of the “Koch Caucus” along with Reid Ribble, noted in the link above).

So I think that brings the official count up to date; I should also start thinking about a proper commemoration for the eventual 50th repeal vote. Because, knowing this bunch in the House, that vote will surely come.

Finally, as long as I’ve devoted so much space to Congressional miscreants, allow me to finish by bidding a fond farewell to a retiring Dem who set, I believe, a sterling example of how Democrats are supposed to advocate for their constituencies and what kind of legislation they are supposed to author and/or support. And that would be Rush Holt of New Jersey (here).

As noted below (citing what I know is an incomplete list of accomplishments)…

He spoke out against the ever-pervasive surveillance state here.

On a related note, he sponsored the RESTORE Act in 2007 here (earning the enmity of Joke Line, among others).

He was also a visionary on climate change (here).

He helped secure $3 million to keep the NJ Technology Center at Ft. Monmouth open (here).

He was a staunch defender of Social Security (here).

He won congressional approval of a measure to mandate video recording of interrogations (here).

Holt once introduced a bill to ensure a paper ballot in elections here (that issue more or less got swept under the rug, but last I checked, it still needed to be addressed).

We are truly losing some giants on our side in the House between Holt, Henry Waxman and George Miller. However, it is only right to cycle in new blood, as it were, and to also give thanks for the exemplary precedent set by those who have done their time and have now earned a well-deserved rest, providing the way forward for future heroes on our side, championing future causes for the good of our country. And may we see the day when their hard work comes to joyful fruition for us all.