Boehner's Probable Replacement Admits That Benghazi! Select Committee Is Purely Political (Updated)

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said this last night in an interview with Fox News:

" *** Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?

“But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”

Steve Benen notes: "McCarthy sees the committee as a legitimate accomplishment of the Republican Congress, not because it’s uncovered relevant details about an act of terrorism, but because Hillary Clinton’s 'numbers are dropping.'”

These Benghaaazi! "investigations" have been farcical for so long that even the likely incoming Speaker of the House forgot to give lip service to the fake reason for them --i.e., the need to investigate a terrorist attack -- and just came right out with the real reason for the investigations, namely, the need to attack Hillary Clinton politically. 

Somebody in the GOP needs to take McCarthy aside and tell him that while it is okay to talk like this amongst themselves, he should not say this stuff on national television.

Of course, we've seen this kind of gaffe before.

UPDATE:  Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghaaazi! Committee, had this to say about Kevin McCarthy's astonishing gaffe:

“This stunning concession from Rep. McCarthy reveals the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public:  the core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi Committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and never to conduct an even-handed search for the facts.  It is shameful that Republicans have used this tragedy and the deaths of our fellow Americans for political gain.  Republicans have blatantly abused their authority in Congress by spending more than $4.5 million in taxpayer funds to pay for a political campaign against Hillary Clinton.”

That about sums it up. Looks like Congressman McCarthy has a lot of explaining to do, particularly given that Hillary's campaign will -- no doubt -- repeatedly ram this gaffe up the GOP's collective backside over the next few months. 

Hillary said a few weeks ago that she is looking forward to testifying next month in front of the Benghaaazi! Committee.  I didn't believe her when she initially made that comment, but now I think she is probably looking forward to it, given that Kevin McCarthy's gaffe will no doubt shape the first few lines of Hillary's opening statement.  It will probably go something like this:

"Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of this Select Committee on Benghaaazi!, thank you for giving me this opportunity to appear before you today.  And special thanks to House Majority Leader -- and incoming House Speaker -- Kevin McCarthy for admitting recently that this investigation has nothing to do with uncovering the facts about a terror attack which killed four of my friends, but instead has everything to do with the GOP effort to attack me politically.  That kind of candor from a high-ranking Republican is extremely rare these days, and I applaud Congressman McCarthy's political courage in coming clean on this . . . . "

Bottom line -- when you are trying to discredit a political enemy, never ever give her a weapon like this to use against you. McCarthy made a very amateurish mistake. 

Jason Chaffetz Is A Fucking Idiot

The good stuff starts at 1:55:



Even pro-lifers were appalled by how crappy the GOP interrogators were at today's anti-Planned Parenthood monkey trial.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but if anti-abortion groups have to doctor videos and present an intentionally misleading graph in order to make their case against Planned Parenthood, then something tells me they must have had a horseshit case to begin with.

And one more thing -- Benghaaaziii!!!!!!!! [!] tm

UPDATE:  The Rude Pundit chimes in on this issue as only the Rude Pundit can (reader discretion . . . advised).

Paul Krugman Nails It

Krugman's entire op/ed about Boehner's departure is worth a read, but here are the high points:

In 2008 a stimulus plan passed Congress with bipartisan support, and the case for a further stimulus in 2009 was overwhelming. But with a Democrat in the White House, Mr. Boehner demanded that policy go in the opposite direction, declaring that “American families are tightening their belts. But they don’t see government tightening its belt.” And he called for government to “go on a diet.”

This was know-nothing economics, and incredibly irresponsible at a time of crisis; not long ago it would have been hard to imagine a major political figure making such a statement. Did Mr. Boehner actually believe what he was saying? Was he just against anything Mr. Obama was for? Or was he engaged in deliberate sabotage, trying to block measures that would help the economy because a bad economy would be good for Republican electoral prospects?

Anyone familiar with this blog knows how I feel on this question: I have no doubt that Boehner and the GOP were deliberately trying to sabotage Obama's presidency, even though this would cause great damage to the country and even though GOP policies are what caused the Great Bush/Cheney Recession in the first place. But as Krugman notes, the GOP strategy against Obama failed miserably:

[D]espite all Mr. Boehner’s efforts to bring him down, Mr. Obama is looking more and more like a highly successful president. For the base, which has never considered Mr. Obama legitimate — polling suggests that many Republicans believe that he wasn't even born here — this is a nightmare. And all too many ambitious Republican politicians are willing to tell the base that it’s Mr. Boehner’s fault, that he just didn’t try blackmail hard enough.

This is nonsense, of course. In fact, the controversy over Planned Parenthood that probably triggered the Boehner exit — shut down the government in response to obviously doctored videos? — might have been custom-designed to illustrate just how crazy the G.O.P.’s extremists have become, how unrealistic they are about what confrontational politics can accomplish.

Krugman ends his piece by stating:  "[D]on’t cry for (or with) Mr. Boehner; cry for America, which must find a way to live with a G.O.P. gone mad."  Hopefully, this insanity to which Krugman refers will soon prove fatal to the Republican Party and we won't have to put up with this crap too much longer.

I'll end my post with this thought:  If members of the GOP think this form of confrontational politics will work against Obama in the final sixteen months of his presidency, then they truly are delusional.  This is because the President gives less than a shit about what Republicans are doing these days, and as a result, Obama is enjoying a highly successful 2015.

A Few Of My Favorite Things About Donald Trump

JB recently posted this comment:

I watched Trump's interview on Colbert last night...I'm starting to like that guy. For a conservative dick, at least he's not the xtian Taliban. His saber rattling with Iran and China is stupid and pointless but entertaining. If I didn't think he'd serve elephant steaks dusted with powdered rhino horn at the inaugural dinner I might just be inclined to vote for him.

I couldn't agree more. Trump is my favorite GOP candidate after Kasich, and I dislike the rest of the field so much I couldn't even tell you who'd come in third for me. Maybe Rand Paul?

Trump actually supports raising taxes on the wealthy (no doubt because, unlike the rest of the candidates, he doesn't have any rich donors pulling his strings) and he supports a single payer health care system (he just doesn't like Obamacare because, you know . . . Obama!!). My one problem with Trump is that he gets incredibly repetitive on the campaign trail -- which is very bad for him because he doesn't have a lot to say substantively anyway -- and that is why once every week or so he needs to pick a fight with somebody in order to sound fresh again.

But what I like most about Trump is that he focuses on things he knows could never happen but that the extremists in the GOP love to hear, and he is destroying the Republican Party in the process. This includes the "need" to build a huge wall on the Southern Border and the "need" to ship tens of millions of Mexicans away in cattle cars to Christ-knows-where (despite the fact that illegal immigration is currently at a net zero).

Trump has correctly surmised that the Republican base is very angry right now, not because the country is in bad shape, but because things are going pretty well despite the fact that an illegal immigrant from Kenya has occupied the White House since January 2009.  Trump knows that there is no better way to appeal to a shitload of pissed-off GOP racists than to blame all their "problems" on a bunch of brown people.

In fact, I can't imagine anything that would infuriate the racist GOP base more than Obama's accomplishments in 2015, mostly because these haters were undoubtedly looking forward to Obama being an ineffective lame-duck president. 

Instead, these Amurikans have had to endure one Obama victory after another, and the list of successes is a long one: the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, the de-thawing of the U.S. relationship with Cuba, the recent climate change agreements (made even more infuriating given that the Pope is siding with the President on this issue), Obama's recent successes in the Supreme Court on health care reform and gay marriage, poor people actually having access to affordable health coverage, the big reduction in the deficit under Obama's watch (which is why you don't hear Republicans talking about the deficit anymore), the confederate flags coming down, the GDP at nearly 4%, etc.

Indeed, it's been a pretty tough year for Republicans, and Trump knows how to capitalize on all the resulting frustration.  And it certainly doesn't help matters much that all these Democratic successes occurred after one of the worst -- if not the worst -- Republican presidencies in our country's history.

UPDATE:  I guess you can scratch one of my favorite things about Donald Trump off of the list -- he now wants to lower taxes for the rich.  Nice flip-flop there, Don.  Very Republican of you.

Quote of the Week

“You have some people who are just focused on making the trains run and getting things done as opposed to standing up for the that things we need to fight for.” 

- Rick Santorum, discussing why it is important for Republicans to let the country go to shit just so that radicalized members of the GOP can push their extremist agenda that has little chance of getting through Congress and absolutely no chance of surviving an Obama veto.

Christ, people -- if you hate this country so much, then just do us all a favor and get the fuck out.

BONUS QUOTE:  “I think it signals the crazies have taken over the party, taken over to the party that you can remove a speaker of the House who’s second in line to be president, a constitutional officer in the middle of his term with no allegations of impropriety, a person who’s honest and doing his job. This has never happened before in our country. He could have stayed on.” -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), on Boehner's resignation.

As I have stated before, the GOP is clearly in its death throes -- I just don't see how it can survive much longer as a national party.

Trump Is Right: Carly Fiorina Is Ugly

I don't think she's physically ugly -- but she is clearly "ugly" in other ways.

I watched the last GOP presidential debate -- the one that catapulted Fiorina's standing in the polls -- and she said during that debate that undercover videos taken by anti-abortion activists during a "sting operation" against Planned Parenthood featured a "fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”

I remember thinking at the time, "Wow, that's interesting -- why haven't I heard about this before tonight?"  Well, the answer to that question is simple:  the footage of which she was speaking simply does not exist.

And that's where the story really gets interesting (from The Nation):

Since it’s not actually possible to watch the footage Fiorina described, the PAC supporting her recently tried to create it. A heavily-edited one-minute video posted to YouTube on Saturday and emailed to her supporters contains clips of Fiorina at the debate, interspersed with images and audio cobbled together from a variety of sources. There’s an image that seems to be a fetus with its limbs moving, but it’s not from Planned Parenthood; it’s from the Grantham Collection and Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, two anti-abortion groups known for creating misleading graphics. The audio, meanwhile, was taken from an unrelated clip from CMP. The video then cuts to an image of a stillborn baby that again has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood, and was used without the permission of the parent.

My take: either Fiorina is the type of person who has no problem looking the American people in the eyes and intentionally lying to them, or she is delusional. Neither possibility is particularly presidential.

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws of . . . Defeat

In a post last week, Greg Sargent used the phrase "snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat" to describe all the repeat votes the Republicans in Congress are doing with regard to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.  But even Sargent is probably surprised that the GOP is still at it.

They made yet another attempt yesterday to block Obama's deal, and the result was pretty much the same:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, had called for a second vote despite protests from Democrats that it was a waste of time. Mr. McConnell insisted that senators needed to rethink their support for the accord, but 42 Democrats — the same number as last week — teamed to prevent the resolution from advancing.

And it's still not over. Incredibly, there remains at least one more vote on the horizon:

Frustrated with the outcome, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., set up a third vote Thursday on a measure that would bar Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran unless Tehran recognized Israel as a state and released U.S. prisoners held in Iran.

I think Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and we've seen this particular brand of insanity before.  Indeed, I lost count of how many times the GOP-controlled House has voted to repeal Obamacare, but it is well over fifty by now.

And the insanity is spreading.  Kim Davis, that asshole clerk from Kentucky, continues to beat a dead horse in her quest to show just how much of a hateful prick she is:

A motion by Kim Davis -- the anti-gay marriage clerk in Kentucky -- to halt a requirement that she issue marriage licenses to gay couples was denied by a federal appeals court Tuesday. Davis is suing Kentucky Gov. Steven Beshear (D) and state librarian Wayne Onkst for enforcing a requirement that Kentucky clerks grant same-sex marriage licenses, which she objects to on religious grounds. She had ask the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to temporarily halt the requirement while the lawsuit proceeds.

Time to move on, folks.

** I know that Kim Davis is supposedly a Democrat, but she's definitely from the Zell Miller Wing of the Democratic Party.

Tweet of the Week

Jeb! Is Having Money Troubles!

Interesting:

Since the first face-to-face encounter with Trump, Bush's once-dominant status has been erased. His numbers peaked at nearly 17 percent nationally in mid-July, but they were cut in half by last week to just 8.3 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls frequently cited by campaigns. In New Hampshire, a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday put him in a tie for fifth place, far behind Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and businesswoman Carly Fiorina.

The drop also resulted in what top donors have hinted was a less-than-anticipated haul in fundraising during August, forcing the campaign to tighten its spending. While the changes affected mostly senior campaign aides, the most notable change is that Bush, who spent most of the year traveling on private jets to campaign events, has started flying commercial airliners more often, as he did Friday.

I Guess The White House Has Finally Had Enough Of Dick Cheney

Obama Hands GOP Yet Another Crushing Defeat

Republicans must be getting pretty tired of continually losing to a "lame duck" president they hate with every fiber of their being (via the Oregonian):

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, one of the last undecided Democratic senators on the Iran nuclear deal, announced Tuesday that he would support the pact despite his distrust of the Iranian regime. ***

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also announced his support for the nuclear deal on Tuesday.  All told, 41 Democrats now back the agreement, giving them the votes needed to successfully filibuster attempts by Republican leaders to send a resolution disapproving the Iran deal to the president's desk.

What I like the most about this particular Obama victory is the amount of effort the GOP put into destroying this deal. Indeed, not a single Republican in Congress will vote to uphold the agreement, despite the fact that some prominent Republicans outside of Congress (e.g., Colin Powell and Dick Lugar) support it.

The GOP apparently thought that its overwhelming opposition to this deal -- backed by well over $20 million worth of negative ads -- would carry the day. The Republicans' problem, of course, is that they chose -- literally on Day One of Obama's presidency -- to oppose the President on everything, even on issues the GOP once supported.  It was therefore very difficult for Republicans to gain much traction with regard to the nuclear deal, given that the American people have long been accustomed to universal GOP opposition to All Things Barack.

More on this here.

Even Chris Wallace Has Had Enough of Dick Cheney's Horse-Shit

Fox News' Chris Wallace, after listening to former vice-president Dick Cheney's criticism on Obama's Iran Deal this morning, pointed out that Cheney had eight years to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and didn't do dick:

“You and President Bush, the Bush-Cheney administration, dealt with Iran for eight years, and I think it was fair to say that there was never any real, serious military threat,” Wallace noted. “Iran went from zero known centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000. So in fairness, didn’t you leave — the Bush-Cheney administration — leave President Obama with a mess?” the Fox News host asked.

“I don’t think of it that way,” Cheney replied. “There was military action that had an impact on the Iranians, it was when we took down Saddam Hussein. There was a period of time when they stopped their program because they were scared that what we did to Saddam, we were going to do to them next.”

“But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000,” Wallace pressed.

“Well, they may have well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch,” Cheney wrongly insisted.

“No, no, no,” Wallace fired back. “By 2009, they were at 5,000.”

“Right,” Cheney grumbled.

"Right." That might be the first time I've heard the Asshole Cheney admit a mistake.

This Pretty Much Sums It Up

Is This The Beginning of the End for Hillary's Presidential Ambitions?

This story isn't getting much play on liberal websites, but I think Hillary's campaign might have reached an inflection point because of it (from Political Wire):

A former Hillary Clinton staffer who helped set up the former secretary of state’s private email server has vowed to invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions after a congressional committee subpoenaed him, NBC News reports.

First Read says the news “is yet another reminder how this email story is out of her control. After all, what’s in the best interests of the campaign (Team Clinton released a statement that they wanted the former aide, Bryan Pagliano, to testify) isn’t necessarily in the best interests of everyone involved (Pagliano’s lawyer certainly thought otherwise). And when that dynamic is at play, things are no longer in your hands.”

Hillary's campaign will attempt to explain this away by saying this has nothing to do with her; but once folks associated with Hillary start invoking the Fifth Amendment, I think that probably signals the beginning of the end for her campaign.

The same thing happened to Chris Christie.  Prior to BridgeGate, Christie was considered a top candidate for the GOP nomination in 2016.  Not anymore -- BridgeGate ended all that, even though there is no evidence [yet] that Christie had any direct involvement in that scandal. 

One thing is for sure -- this means that Biden will definitely get into the race.

Ten Years Ago . . .

[The following is a re-posting of what I wrote a decade ago on this blog in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the botched Federal response to that catastrophe.  I think it is important to occasionally look back on stuff like this, not only to remind ourselves of what happened, but to see how far we've come since . . .]

We Needed a Great President Last Week, But We Didn't Get One

What's that old Rumsfeld line again? I think he said, "You go to War with the Army you have." Last week, America experienced one of its greatest catastrophes, and we had to go into that disaster with the president we have. Unfortunately, we had George Bush in the White House.

Actually, he was nowhere near the White House. He was on vacation. It's a shame that Terri Schiavo's body wasn't still kept alive and maintained in New Orleans when Katrina hit. Bush did, after all, interrupt one of his vacations last March to fly -- in the middle of the night -- all the way back to Washington D.C. to sign legislation to keep Schiavo's body on life support. Had Schiavo been in New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath, Bush would have sent an entire division in on Monday evening to rescue her body, and perhaps some of those troops could have remained and helped the people who were actually still alive.

Oh, I'm sorry -- did I write that Bush was on vacation? I guess that on the day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, our president cut his vacation short so he could -- well, deliver a speech in California regarding how great a job he was doing in Iraq. Or was he still technically on vacation when he delivered that speech? Unfortunately, we may not know the answer to that and other questions until Bush enters retirement and writes his much anticipated book on travel and leisure.

Dick Cheney, the one who actually runs the show, was nowhere to be found during the Katrina aftermath. Cheney's excuse for avoiding Vietnam was that he had "other priorities." I'm looking forward to hearing what his other priorities were this last week. I'm sure they had something to do with GOP fund-raising -- if he wasn't on vacation, that is. We do, however, know where Condi Rice was. She was buying a shit-load of expensive shoes in NYC. She also attended a Broadway musical on Wednesday night. Good for her.

Perhaps Condi stayed away from D.C. because of all the in-fighting that was going on there. Administration officials who weren't on vacation were debating for days about who was actually in charge of the Katrina response. Meanwhile, people were dying needlessly in New Orleans. Where's Alexander "I'm In Charge Here" Haig when you need him?

The thing I find the most remarkable -- from a purely political standpoint -- is the opportunity the Bush Administration pissed away. The Katrina aftermath gave Bush the perfect chance to revive his faltering presidency. Sure, he still would have had to contend with the fact that his tax cuts for the rich and his misadventure in Iraq pulled important funding away from the flood control programs in Louisiana, but how many Americans really pay attention to minutiae like that? Hell, over 40% of the U.S. still believes that Iraqis were flying the hijacked planes on 9-11.

Bush, with the help of his Congressional friends, could have easily weathered any political shit-storm that emerged from the funding-cut issue. And all he needed to do to get that help in Congress was appear on the ball and in charge before, during, and after Katrina hit.

Instead, Bush fumbled the ball, and his Congressional allies are now going to have a much more difficult time covering up for him. Indeed, political expediency may force some of Bush's supporters in Congress to discontinue their efforts to prop up an Administration that is now widely seen as incompetent and out of touch. The 2006 mid-term elections are, after all, just around the corner, and there are a lot of angry voters out there.

Bush's big problem, of course, was that he couldn't control the images coming out of New Orleans like he could with the Iraq Debacle. It is, for example, pretty easy for the commander-in-chief to enforce an order that no pictures be taken of caskets returning from a war zone. Bush's failure, however, to move quickly in response to the Gulf Coast disaster allowed the media to go in there and give the world an unobstructed view of the horrors left in Katrina's wake. As a result, many attempts by BushCo and its apologists to "focus on the positive" were met with angry responses from on-the-scene television personalities who just weren't buying it.

This country has often had the good fortune of strong leadership during times of crisis. We had Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Great Depression and World War II, and Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. No such luck this time. I've often referred to Bush as arguably the worst American president of all time. There doesn't seem to be a need for argument on that point anymore.

"Conciliatory Rhetoric As A Ruthless Strategy"

Last year, I wrote this about Obama:

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.

Although I stand by that statement, I was also among the group of people who thought Obama gradually adopted this strategy only when it became apparent that the GOP was going to obstruct him on everything.  But this excellent post by Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly makes it clear that this was Obama's strategy from day one:

[T]he historical record shows that he wasn’t unaware of Republican plans from the outset. In his book The New New Deal, Michael Grunwald points out that, during the negotiations over the initial stimulus package (which was signed by President Obama 28 days after he was inaugurated), a couple of Republican Senators informed Vice President Biden that the plan was to obstruct anything the President tried to do. So, at minimum, we know that Obama was not uninformed.

Obama then took this awareness of the Republicans' plan and used it against them, knowing -- of course -- that the GOP will oppose everything he proposes, including ideas that Republicans once supported. LeTourneau writes:

The scenario that played out over and over again on everything from health care reform to budgets was that President Obama would put his ideas on the table and then ask Republicans to do the same. Most of the time, they simply refused. As the President demonstrated that he was willing to meet them more than halfway, the demands they did articulate became more and more extreme - leading to things like a possible default over raising the debt limit.

Knowing that the Republican position was simply to obstruct, President Obama offered pragmatic conciliations, recognizing that the closer he moved to what had traditionally been “sensible” Republican policies, the more difficult that would become. Their options were to either work with him on solutions (his preference) or continue to obstruct - painting themselves into an ever-more extremist corner.

LeTourneau closes her article by stating that it might be too soon to say whether or not “conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy” is a success. But I think the strategy has been enormously successful.  Just listen to what the Republican candidates for president are saying right now: some support banning abortion for 10-year-old girls who conceive because they were raped, many support mandatory deportation for all illegal aliens as well as their children who were born in the U.S., most support mandatory perpetual warfare in the Middle East and mandatory rejection of climate science, and on and on and on.

Well played, Mr. President.

Christ, What's Next -- Death Camps?

After Mitt Romney was crushed in the 2012 General Election, the Republican Party issued an autopsy report which proposed certain fixes for the GOP.  Here is an excerpt from that report, released in 2013:

"If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our Party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door."

Wow, what a difference a couple years makes. Here is what Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner [!!!], is saying now about illegal immigration:

Trump’s plan, which is detailed on his website, calls for construction of a wall along the Mexican border, vowing to “make Mexico pay” for it; an end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants; the defunding of sanctuary cities; the strengthening of immigration enforcement; and more. In an interview on NBC News, Trump added that he would rescind President Obama’s executive actions shielding millions from deportation, and deport all illegal immigrants: “They have to go.”

If you think Trump is the only one in the GOP race saying shit like this, then you'd be wrong. Scott Walker now supports mass deportation as well, as do other Republican presidential candidates.

Look, I know I'm on the record saying that the GOP's days as a national party are numbered, but even I find these latest developments astounding. The Republican Party's relationship with Hispanic voters was bad enough prior to Trump's ascendancy -- radicalized elements within the GOP basically prevented the passage of the bipartisan immigration reform bill, and the GOP is now actively trying to thwart President Obama's attempt to fix the system on his own.

But Donald Trump has taken Republican hatred for Hispanics to a whole new level, and there is no way this can end well for the GOP.  I guess now I know why the 2013 report on the Republican Party's health was called an "autopsy" -- the folks who wrote the report could read the writing on the wall.

Re-Writing History is Hard -- Part 2

U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno won't let Jeb Bush blame Obama for the current instability in Iraq:

Ahead of his official retirement on Friday, Odierno, the former highest-ranking officer in Iraq and one of the architects of the 2007 troop surge there, sought to set the record straight.

“I remind everybody that us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. That was always the plan, we had promised them that we would respect their sovereignty,” Odierno said during his final press conference at the Pentagon.

Gen. Odierno brings up a good point, one that the Republican Party wants everyone to forget: The U.S. launched the invasion to bring freedom to the Iraqi people -- at least that is one of the reasons BushCo gave for the invasion.

The invasion itself was actually dubbed "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and even the idiots in the Bush Administration knew that if you give an invasion a title like that one, then you sure the fuck better follow through on the whole "freedom" part.  That is why the words "freedom" and "democracy" dominated BushCo's post-invasion rhetoric.  Here is an example of that from 2005:

"It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration (of Independence) was extended to all Americans," Bush said. "It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq." * * *

The president said Iraq's path to democracy would not be a smooth one and highlighted what he called three milestones the nation has achieved. Those were: handing over sovereignty to the Iraqi leaders on June 28, 2004, two days ahead of schedule; holding elections in January 2005 and adopting a democratic constitution.

And that whole "freedom and democracy" thing is what George Bush tried to do in December 2008 when he signed the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.  These are Bush's own words at the signing ceremony:

"The agreement provides American troops and Defense Department officials with authorizations and protections to continue supporting Iraq's democracy once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. This agreement respects the sovereignty and the authority of Iraq's democracy. The agreement lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq -- a withdrawal that is possible because of the success of the surge."

Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi democracy -- that's what Bush's efforts near the end of his presidency were all about.  The Surge -- and the subsequent Status of Forces Agreement -- constituted BushCo's last shot at getting a flower to grow out of the steaming pile of excrement it deposited in the Middle East, and needless to say, it failed miserably.

What I find most humorous about the Republican Party's attempt to re-write history on Iraq is that Jeb and the rest of the GOP apparently wanted the United States to subsequently reject the Status of Forces Agreement signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and thus act more like a conquering invader than a liberator. If that's the case, then they should have called the invasion something other than "Operation Iraqi Freedom."  I think "Operation Free Iraqi Oil" and "Operation Crush The Brown People" were available.

Re-Writing History Is Hard . . .

. . . especially recent history. Just ask Jeb Bush:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was heckled during an Iowa speech over his brother George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. Bush criticized the haste of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq under the Obama administration. “The Iraqis want our help,” he said. “They want to know that we have skin in the game, that we’re committed to this.”

“We had to get out in 2011!” the heckler yelled. Despite the interruption, Bush kept his composure. “We didn’t have to get out in 2011,” he retorted.

“Your brother signed the deal!” the heckler continued.

“It could have been modified, and that was the expectation,” Bush said. “Everybody in Iraq and everybody in Washington knew that this deal could have been expanded. And now what we need to do–”

“Your brother signed a bad deal!”

“–now we have to do something else,” he finished.

This isn't going to end well for Jeb, because folks not only remember the clusterfuck his brother created in Iraq -- they are still really pissed off about it.

Quote Of The Week

"In the modern Republican Party, making sense is a secondary consideration. Years of relentless propaganda combined with extreme frustration over the disastrous Bush years and two terms of a Kenyan Muslim terrorist president have cast the party's right wing into a swirling suckhole of paranoia and conspiratorial craziness. There is nothing you can do to go too far, a fact proved, if not exactly understood, by the madman, Trump."

- Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone.

Taibbi is definitely on to something here.  Indeed, I've long thought that the GOP's weird obsession with Benghazi!! had more to do with frustration over the Bush Administration's failures than anything else.

Remember: Bush/Cheney was a dream come true for right wingers -- not one but two tax cuts for the rich, not one but two wars against brown people, sweeping deregulation, etc. -- and the whole thing ended in disaster.

Can you imagine how Republican extremists (i.e., the entire GOP) then felt when an uppity . . . gentleman named Barack Hussein Obama won the White House in 2008 and then had the temerity to not only prevent another Great Depression but to also kill Osama bin Laden a mere two years into his presidency? The Bush Regime wasn't able to do that, and it had eight years.

The GOP psyche just couldn't handle it. The passage of the Affordable Care Act and a second Obama term probably didn't help much either.  The result, of course, is that the Republican Party has gone completely insane.  And I can't get enough of it.