Quote of the Week

“I know some will call this amnesty, but don’t worry, there is plenty of turkey to go around."

Barack Obama, on his executive action pardoning two turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Why Will This Never Happen?

Because it would be too freaking awesome:

Congressional Republicans have found themselves completely stymied by President Obama’s executive action on immigration. There’s no bill for them to vote down, they lack the votes for impeachment, and shutting down the government never works.

National Review editor Rich Lowry has suggested an innovative new way for Republicans to express their displeasure: ban President Obama from delivering the State of the Union Address: “If I were John Boehner,” he said, referring to the House speaker, “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”

I would love this. Can you imagine the blow back the GOP-led Congress would experience if it banned America's first Black president from giving the State of the Union Address in the Capitol Building?

But the best part would be that Obama could give the speech elsewhere (e.g., the White House lawn, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial). I'm not aware of anything in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution that requires the speech to be delivered on Capitol Hill. And he could attack the GOP viciously because he won't feel the need to restrain himself like he would if the speech was delivered in front of Congress.

That's why Boehner and McConnell would never go along with banning Obama from the Capitol Building for the State of the Union.  But who knows -- maybe cooler heads will not prevail on this one.  I remain hopeful.

UPDATE:  More on this from Steve Benen.

Colbert's Hilarious Take On GOP Immigration Outrage

Beautiful:

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Lindsey Graham Struggles To Keep Fading Benghazi "Scandal" on Life Support

Last week was a tough one for Republicans -- and for folks like me who really love Benghazi!!, the greatest fake scandal in history.

The "scandal" suffered a huge setback when the House Intelligence Committee -- which is of course controlled by Republicans -- wrapped up its two-year investigation by concluding what everyone already knew, namely, that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 Benghazi attack and that there was no wrongdoing by the Obama administration.

But thanks to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), it appears that Benghazi!! will not go quietly into that good night:

"I think the report is full of crap," Graham said on CNN's "State of the Union." The senator insisted that members of the administration altered the Benghazi talking points after the attack.

"I'm saying that anybody who has followed Benghazi at all knows that the CIA deputy director did not come forward to tell Congress what role he played in changing the talking points," he said. "And the only way we knew he was involved is when he told a representative at the White House, I'm going to do a hard review of this, a hard rewrite."

CNN host Gloria Borger then told Graham that the House report concludes that the administration received bad information at first and did not lie.  "That's a bunch of garbage," Graham shot back. "That's a complete bunch of garbage."

You go girl! What I love the best about this is that even if the delusional Lindsey Graham is right and the talking points were changed, then the "scandal" some Republicans believe is the biggest since Watergate is all about . . . changing the fucking talking points. That's it.

And that's why it's my favorite fake scandal of all time.  Long live Benghazi!!

The GOP Is Completely Hosed On Immigration

Obama is standing his ground on his threat to take executive action on immigration, and Republicans are beside themselves in rage. Needless to say, I can't get enough.

Mitch McConnell recently stated that such a unilateral act by Obama would be akin to "waiving a red flag in front of a bull" and it would "poison the well' with regard to any chance of bipartisanship in the future. And radicalized right wingers like Charles Krauthammer described such potential action by the President as "an impeachable offense."  But Obama is going to do it anyway.

The most hilarious part is that Republicans apparently think that Obama has a choice. He clearly does not.  If Obama fails to act on immigration before the end of the year, then the Democrats will take a huge political hit insofar as Hispanic support is concerned. Latinos are mad enough that Obama put the promised reforms on hold until after the election.

But if Obama acts -- which he must do -- then really good things happen for the Democrats:

Not only does the President, and the party, get credit with Latinos for attempting to move forward on immigration reform, but at the same time he puts Republicans in an impossible position. The GOP base is apoplectic about the potential of any reform. Yet, saner party leaders know that Republicans are in danger of losing Latinos forever (other than Cubans, Latinos tend to vote Democratic). So the President effectively puts Republicans in a box — dog-fight style — two years before a presidential.

What about the impeachment threat, you say? Well, that's the best part. Obama wants to be impeached.

Just think about how that would look. Here is a guy trying to do something while the least productive Congress in modern history refuses to do anything, and the lazy GOP-led House of Representatives responds . . . by impeaching the one guy actually trying to solve the problem.  Mitch McConnell knows how awful the optics would be for the GOP on something like that, so much so that he's even ruled out merely shutting down the government if Obama acts unilaterally on immigration reform.

And what about McConnell's statement that Obama will "poison the well" with regard to future cooperation from the GOP?  Well, that's all horseshit, of course.  The GOP got crushed in the 2008 and 2012 elections, and how did they respond?  They veered even more to the right and cooperated with Obama and the Democrats even less.

So anyone out there who actually believes Republicans will finally start negotiating in good faith -- now that they've won a big mid-term victory over the hated President Blackenstein -- just hasn't been paying attention.

Quote of the Week

"[T]he worst foreign-policy decision in U.S. history. . . ."

-- George Will. describing the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (from his recent National Review piece).

It's good to see a prominent Republican thinker finally coming to grips with that colossal clusterfuck.

Jon Stewart Explains "The Chickenshit Gambit"

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Be Careful What You Wish For . . .

The conservative National Review published an editorial today wherein it stated that Republicans should not even try to govern -- even though they now control the entire legislative branch -- because that would "maximize the incentive for the Democrats to filibuster everything they can — and for President Obama to veto the remainder"  The Editorial concludes this idea by stating: "Then the Democrats will explain that the Republicans are too extreme to get anything done."

In other words, according to the conservatives at the National Review, the GOP shouldn't give the Democrats a chance to do what the Republicans have been doing to Obama and the Democrats since the first days of Obama's presidency. I think a strong undercurrent in the editorial is that obstructionism worked for the GOP in the last election cycle so Republicans should continue obstructing for as long as they can, despite the fact that they are now looked upon to actually do some governing themselves.

Of course, if the GOP refuses to govern and continues to be the party of "no," that's going to hurt the 2016 GOP presidential candidates who have run on the notion that Republicans can in fact govern. I think the bottom line is that the GOP will be forced to at least pretend to govern now, and the only things they are going to be able to get through Congress are bills that the Baggers can get behind (e.g., the repeal of Obamacare) and that Obama will therefore certainly veto.

What's that old saying again?  I think it goes: "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it."  Well Republicans, you got what you wished for -- you now control both the Senate and the House.

Good luck with that.  And have fun trying to pass a bill that the President will sign, because I think you will have lots of folks in the Bagger Caucus who will have a very hard time handing President Blackenstein a legislative victory, even a minor one.

Quote of the Week

"Take a look at this: gas under $3 a gallon -- under $3 a gallon. Unemployment under 6%, whoever thought? Stock market breaking records every day. No wonder [Obama] is so unpopular."

- David Letterman.

Quote of the Week

“[B]less their hearts, those haters out there. They don’t understand that it invigorates me, it wants me to get out there and defend the innocent. It makes me want to work so hard for justice in this country. So hey, the more they are pouring on, the more I’m gonna bug the crap out of them by being out there with the voice, with the message, hopefully running for office in the future too.”

- Half-term Governor Sarah Palin.

My Response: Fuck yeah you should run.  Please run.  I'm begging you to run.  If you run for president or any other political office, I will gladly contribute to your campaign -- that's how much I want you to run.

Please run.

The Fourteenth Blackbird: How Liberals Search For The Truth

A recent Pew Report revealed that conservatives are more interested in gorging themselves on right-wing propaganda while liberals are more interested in getting the facts right. Pew Research "gave respondents a list of 36 popular media sources and asked how much they trusted each one." Here is what it found (via Salon):

Out of the 36 news sources, consistent liberals trusted 28, a mix of liberal and mainstream news sources. Mostly, liberal respondents generally agreed, holding out a little more skepticism for overtly ideological sources like Daily Kos or ThinkProgress, but not actually distrusting them, either. The only news sources liberals didn’t trust, generally, are overtly right-wing ones, such as Fox News, the Blaze, Breitbart, or Rush Limbaugh’s show.

Conservatives, on the other hand, saw betrayers and liars around every corner. Consistent conservatives distrusted a whopping 24 out of 36 outlets and mostly conservative respondents distrusted 15 and were skeptical of quite a few more. The hostility wasn’t just to well-known liberal sources like MSNBC. Strong conservatives hated all the network news, CNN, NPR, and the major national outlets, except the Wall Street Journal.

This explains to me why conservative talk radio is successful and liberal talk radio is not. I've tried listening to progressive talk radio and it just didn't turn my crank all that much even though I consider myself a liberal. It all just sounded too propagandistic for my tastes.

Like lots of other progressives, I prefer getting my information from a variety of sources, even -- on occasion -- Fox News and some conservative websites.  I still cannot stomach Rush Limbaugh and only listen to his program when things are going very badly for Republicans. Rush is the most hilarious thing going when bad things are happening to the GOP.

But in any event, when it comes to finding the truth of a matter, I think William Faulkner said it best:

"[There are] thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird -- but the truth, I would like to think, comes out, that when the reader has read all these thirteen different ways of looking at the blackbird, the reader has his own fourteenth image of that blackbird, which I would like to think is the true one."

I believe extreme polarization exists in the U.S. because a lot of conservatives are intellectually lazy in that they refuse to look at important issues from many different angles before formulating an opinion. I find such laziness to be incredibly unpatriotic and extremely dangerous.

The Political Genius Of Barack Obama

I've been saying for years that President Obama is one of the most conservative Democrats ever to sit in the White House.  Well, one of Ronald Reagan's advisers apparently agrees with me.

Former Reagan administration domestic policy aide Bruce Bartlett argued in a recent essay that Obama "has charted a center-right course" with regard to foreign and domestic policy:

Populating his administration with hawks like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama has presided over new military engagements abroad while overseeing a draconian crackdown on national security leaks at home, Bartlett notes.

Meanwhile, Obama has pursued “very conservative” fiscal policies, Bartlett writes, signing a stimulus package that was far smaller than what experts and advisers like Christina Romer found would be necessary to really prime the nation’s economic pump. Moreover, Obama has conducted himself like a deficit hawk, “proposing much deeper cuts in spending and the deficit than did the Republicans during the 2011 budget negotiations,” when a deal eluded the two parties. And don’t buy into the the GOP “harping” that Obama hates business, Bartlett cautions. The president, he says, “has bent over backward to protect corporate profits.”

What about the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement? That, too, is evidence of Obama’s conservatism, Bartlett writes. Observing that Obamacare’s market-based approach drew on a model put forth by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Bartlett contrasts Obamacare with a real left-wing alternative like universal Medicare. So why are conservatives so obstinately opposed to a fundamentally conservative health care law? “The only thing is that it was now supported by a Democratic president that Republicans vowed to fight on every single issue,” Bartlett writes.

Bartlett's last point touches upon the one thing that has driven the recent radicalization of the Republican Party more than anything else, and this radicalization has culminated in the purging of nearly all moderates from the GOP ranks. Charlie Crist, the former GOP governor of Florida who is now running for that post as a Democrat, famously remarked: "I didn't leave the Republican Party -- it left me."

That's where the genius of Obama's strategy comes into play.  By adopting conservative positions, the President has backed the Republican Party into a corner and forced it to become increasingly radicalized in its quest to opposed All Things Barack. In other words, he took the GOP's Achilles Heel, namely, the intense hatred within its ranks for America's first Black president, and fully exploited it to the long-term detriment of the Republican Party.

Indeed, the list of Republican ideas that the GOP now opposes simply because Obama endorsed them is a lengthy one. This list includes Pay-Go, state flexibility in welfare programs implementation, the Bipartisan Deficit Commission, the Individual Health Care Mandate, Cap and Trade, trying terrorism suspects in federal court, Medicare cost savings, and transparency in campaign contributions.

My big question is whether the GOP can avoid its demise as a national party by successfully pivoting from its radical positions after Obama leaves office.  Rand Paul has been recently pushing the necessity of making such attempts, but I think GOP efforts along these lines would be akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Give Me A Fucking Break

Score one point for the fear-mongers (and no -- this is not from The Onion):

An elementary school teacher in Maine has been placed on leave for 21 days, the incubation period of Ebola, after she visited Dallas to attend an educational conference. The teacher did not come into contact with anybody who had tested positive for the virus, but did stay at a hotel “exactly 9.5 miles away from Texas Health Presbyterian,” where Ebola patients have been treated.

It is, however, good to know that some folks are not being fooled by the fear-mongering politicians from both parties. Peter Pattakos, an attorney from Cleveland, found out that he spent 20 minutes Saturday in an Akron bridal shop where Ebola patient Amber Joy Vinson had been on that same day. Lots of folks are freaking out about Vinson's visit to this shop, but not Mr. Pattakos (h/t Chris):

"I didn't exchange any bodily fluids with anyone, so I'm not worried about it," he said. "I'm much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola, even if you were in the same bridal shop."

Thankfully, most Americans are on the same page as Mr. Pattakos. According to a recent NBC News Survey:

54% expressed at least a fair amount of confidence in the federal government to prevent a major Ebola outbreak on domestic soil. Similarly, most respondents expressed confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (76%), the National Institutes of Health (64%), the World Health Organization (64%), and their state’s health department (62%).

I think most Americans understand that the real battleground is located in West Africa, where Ebola is spreading at a pretty good clip.

Unbelievable (With Update)

I have no words for this . . .



Fortunately, The Miami Herald's Mark Caputo has words. He tweeted: "Privately, Republicans/Rick Scott loyalists are telling me the moment he didn't go onstage over fangate was the moment he lost the election."

UPDATE:  From Josh Marshall:

I'd like to think that Charlie Crist's team or Crist himself were such utter geniuses that they knew somehow that pulling out a little hand fan would trigger Rick Scott meltdown and lead him to make a fool of himself just as he seems to be falling behind in his reelection effort. But I figure they probably just got lucky.

That's undoubtedly a correct assessment. Crist and his team were probably as shocked as everyone else over Rick Scott's refusal to take the stage.  Forget the whole issue of the fan itself -- Scott's hissy fit reflects very badly on his character.

On the issue of a candidate's character, it's comparable to Mitt Romney now-infamous 47% speech, except Romney did not know he was being filmed when he made those remarks.  Scott knew this event was being televised.

More Republican Voter Fraud

Hilarious:

UC Irvine law professor Rick Hasen says this development, which he describes as coming from the “Irony Dept,” is just “too delicious.” Leslie Rutledge, the Republican candidate for attorney general in Arkansas, has been discovered to have been registered to vote in multiple states in addition to Arkansas, and even voted by absentee ballot in Arkansas’ general election in November of 2008 – after she had registered to vote in Washington D.C. in July of the same year.

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Rutledge has now been removed from Arkansas’ voting rolls by the Pulaski county clerk, after he confirmed that she was registered to vote in D.C., and possibly Virginia. The removal from the rolls may also lead to her ineligibility to be elected to office. ***

I find it hysterically funny that Republicans are constantly stating that they have no choice but to suppress voter rights all over the country because of virtually non-existent voter fraud; but in the few fraud cases that do arise, it is always Republicans who are the culprits. [Click here, here, here, here and here if you don't believe me.]

Time To Release The 28 Pages

Here is a good article from The New Yorker on the yet-to-be-released 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry Into The 9-11 Attacks. One congressman who has read the classified pages stated that they offer "direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda's attack on America."

President Obama has promised to reverse the Bush Administration on this and declassify these pages, but he has yet to do so.

Americans need to have the full story on Saudi involvement in 9-11. Nearly 3000 people were killed as a result of those attacks.

Fox News and the Great Obama Coffee Salute Scandal (Updated)

Hilarious:

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UPDATE: This pretty much nails it:

God Help Us All

Remember: These questions are being asked by GOP members of the House Committee On Science, Space, and Technology (the relevant part of the video starts at about 2:48):

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It occurred to me as I was watching the video that nobody could possibly be that stupid, not even radical right-wing Republicans.

I think what is happening here is that these House GOPers know they are on the wrong side of this climate change issue and they are intentionally acting as stupid as possible in order to provide themselves some cover while they do the bidding of Big Oil. Then -- when the whole thing goes to shit -- they can simply say that they aren't scientist so it could not possibly be their fault.

Indeed, some Republicans are already using this "I'm No Scientist" defense.

Depend Undergarments Announces New Spokesperson

Continually soiling oneself in fear would be considered a negative thing for most people. But such is not the case with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whose uncanny tendency toward uncontrolled terror-based defecation has paid off big time.

Depend Undergarments announced today that Senator Graham has been hired as its new spokesperson.

"I'm so excited by my partnership with Depend that I am literally shitting myself," said Graham. "Whomever said that extreme cowardice doesn't pay off doesn't know crap."

Even though Graham is best known for losing control of his bowels due to his over-the-top fear of the Terrorizers, he also says that wearing the adult diaper has other benefits.

"What most people don't know is that I also piss myself in fear at the mere mention of the terror group ISIS," admitted Graham. "As the old saying goes, after the thunder comes the rain, but Depend Undergarments has always come through for me in a pinch."

Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the undergarment's manufacturer, refused to discuss how much it is paying the senator except to say: "It's a butt-load." 

It's Back, Baby!!!

And by "it," I mean (of course) . . . Benghazi!!!!! -- my all-time favorite fake scandal:

A Tweet by Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Tuesday attempted to tie the ongoing investigations into domestic abuse by a growing number of National Football League players to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

The move came a day before House Republicans begin their eighth investigation into the two-year-old tragedy. Hasselbeck, whose husband Tim played 12 games in the NFL, tweeted:

 "Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the #nfl @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi #IRS"

And if you are wondering why Benghazi!!!! has returned with a vengeance, I can sum it up in one word --  Hillary!

Anti-Hillary Clinton groups are already going up with television ads centered on Benghazi, the same week that House Republicans' select committee is holding its first hearing on the attacks.

The Stop Hillary PAC, one of the various groups that has cropped up to fight the Hillary 2016 momentum, will start airing an ad in key primary states on Thursday, MSNBC reported. The PAC is spending $100,000 for the advertising campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Benghazi!!!!