Standing Up To Friends

Pat Buchannan is mostly a bombastic dope, but since even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while, I gotta give him props when he has one of his increasingly rare moments of cogency.

Bibi’s dilemma: Despite his threats of Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran is taunting him. His Cabinet is divided. The Shas Party in his coalition opposes a war, as do respected retired generals, former Mossad leaders and President Shimon Peres.

And the Americans have sent emissaries, including Secretary Leon Panetta, to tell Bibi we oppose an Israeli attack. The Pentagon does not want war. Three former U.S. Central Command heads oppose a war. And last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey said he does not wish to be “complicit” in any Israeli attack.

Implied in the word “complicit” is that Dempsey believes an Israeli first strike on Iran could be an act of aggression.

The Israelis were furious, but suddenly the war talk subsided.

A Story Untold

Matt Taibbi would be the most dangerous man in America if anybody paid real attention to what he reports.  Unfortunately, the stories reveal the fact that guys like Willard are doing these hugely horrible things in hugely public ways - they're pulling off their capers in broad daylight - and we want so desperately to believe they wouldn't be doing this right in front of us if it wasn't OK, that we just sit there and watch, not even wondering why the "cops" are sitting there watching with us.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

Like A Nightmare

By way of The Atlantic, linking to NYT (log-in required):

...an inescapable conclusion: the administration's reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed."

NYT got badly used and abused by Cheney in 2002-2003 as a conduit for the bogus rationale for invading Iraq, so there could be some axe-grinding going on here, but if there's any truth in this, we need to hammer it home to expose the fact that Romney's Foreign Policy team is chock full of the same NeoCons who've been fuckin' us over for  a good 12 or 15 years.

The saddest part is that I can see how somebody on the Bush team might've actually bought into the bullshit about FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor ahead of time, and letting the thing go forward in order to get us amped up for WW2 - which could've been used as pretext for distracting Bush from the 9/11 warnings.

And yes - politics can be just that shitty.

Where Was God?

Buy This Book

...right now.

Pic O' The Day

Can somebody tell me if this kinda thing pops up at Obama's rallies?  I think there has to be some probability just because campaigns are closely scripted in a lotta ways, but where is the equivalent - the "both sides do it" example?

Maybe the reason they can't come up with anything true to say about their plans and policies is that they're just so darned busy manufacturing enthusiasm for their candidates.

(hat tip = Crooks & Liars)

The Big Lie Works (?)

"There's no plausible scenario under which it really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform," Ron Haskins, who is now co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, said in an interview with NPR that aired on Wednesday.

Haskins spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee's Human Resources Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff, then as the subcommittee’s staff director. In 2002, he was President George W. Bush's senior adviser on welfare policy.

Willard seems unable to convince "the base" of his credibility as a true conservative, so I think that's why he can't let up on the bullshit. The wingnuts insist on hearing nothing but "Obama's a bad guy", so that's what he has to give them every day.

Post Truth Politics

You know we're pretty well over the edge when Neil Newhouse (Romney campaign pollster) says, "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

From Slacktivist (linking to Political Animal - Steve Benen):

Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI,VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII,XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Click those links. Read the lists. List after list of lie after lie. Hundreds of them — 533, to be exact, although Benen does not make any claim to providing a comprehensive chronicle.

And to put it all together, Mr James Fallows:

Reporters are happiest, safest-feeling, and most comfortable when in the mode of he-said, she-said. "The president's critics claim that he was born in Kenya; administration spokesmen deny the charge." But when significant political players are willing to say things that flat-out are not true -- and when they're not slowed down by demonstrations of their claims' falseness -- then reporters who stick to he-said, she-said become accessories to deception. This is the problem The Atlantic's James Bennet discussed from Tampa yesterday, in a dispatch about the Republicans' false-but-endlessly-repeated claim that the Obama administration is coddling welfare recipients by dropping requirements that they work.

Today's Pix

All this shit is on the "phone" in my pocket

Religious Freedom

(with slight editorial license - hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Pick only "A" or "B" for each question.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services not of my choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to impose my religious beliefs about marriage on those two guys who're standing in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others not to use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to pray in private.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray publicly and/or in the manner of my choosing.

Bring It

So I used to be like:

But now, I'm all like - c'mon - get at me, Bro:

Hot Lesbian Action - And A Gun.

This is either a really strange visualization of a Red-Blue Centrist Compromise or plain ol' porn - or both.  I dunno - sometimes I hate my brain.

Just Sayin'

The Tea-publicans love America and hate Americans - and they lose if everybody votes.

Checkin' Out The Big Dog

Bill Clinton's speech nominating Obama was reportedly "a fact checker's nightmare", but it turns out The Big Dog managed to stay on the porch - mostly.

FactCheck.org:

The worst we could fault him for was a suggestion that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was responsible for bringing down the rate of increase in health care spending, when the fact is that the law’s main provisions have yet to take effect.

--and--

And plenty of other Clinton statistics checked out as accurate. For example, he said that since 1961, when John F. Kennedy took office, 42 million private-sector jobs had been added while Democrats held the White House, compared with 24 million while Republicans were in office. And that’s exactly what Bloomberg News reported in a May 8 story.

Compare that with this: E'ville Times - GOP Convention Scorecard

Press Poodles

This is as bad as it gets - at least from the point of view that appearances matter.  I can't get up over the Certainty Threshold on this one, but I can't just assume this is mere coincidence either.



Sometimes, it is what it seems to be.

(hat tip = Crooks and Liars)