Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

More fallout from impulsive clown Donald "Bone Spurs" Trump's decision to assassinate Iran's top military commander:

For the militants of the Islamic State, the American drone strike that killed the Iranian commander Qassim Suleimani was a two-for-one victory.

First, the killing of General Suleimani removed the leader of one of the Islamic State’s most effective opponents, responsible for building up the alliance of Iran-backed militias that did much of the ground fighting to drive the militants out of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

The assassination has also redirected the wrath of those militias and their many political allies inside Iraq squarely against the American presence there, raising doubts about the continued viability of the American-led campaign to eradicate what is left of the Islamic State and to prevent its revival in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Once again, we must give thanks to those "guardrails" in the Pentagon and elsewhere for keeping Bone Spurs from making catastrophic life and death decisions.  Meanwhile, the clown is doubling down on his war crime threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites should they retaliate for the Soleimani assassination.

Speaking of Bone Spurs, political science professor Matthew Dallek traces how the Republican Party has for decades nurtured  its base's "batty" ideas that made Bone Spurs "the logical consequence":

Perhaps the biggest change of the Trump era is the approach of Republican leaders. In the past, they indulged these theories but never really espoused them. Today, elective officeholders embrace them openly, in the face of explicit counterevidence from the government they purport to run. National security officials have repeatedly stressed in recent weeks that Ukraine did not meddle in the 2016 election and that those who repeat the claim are advancing pro-Russian propaganda. Yet most Republican members of Congress now seem to believe this theory, pointing to a thin report in Politico that documented no top-down, coordinated interference. Trump’s racism (calling Mexican immigrants “rapists”; telling four congresswomen of color who are all U.S. citizens to “go back” to their “crime infested” home countries) and anti-Semitism (he implies Jews are loyal primarily to Israel and motivated mostly by money) align well with old allegations that Jewish bankers and assorted globalists have enriched themselves while inflicting economic havoc on “the people,” as his closing 2016 television ad suggested. [snip]

Ultimately, Trump was the logical consequence of a posture followed for decades at the top echelons of the conservative movement: The batty screeds are silly, but since they help us, we won’t work zealously to purge them. Trump’s conspiracy-based capture of the GOP has less to do with him and his perspective than with a party that sought and often won the support of people who believe those notions.

History professor, Lawrence Wittner, confirms what we've seen with our own eyes about the devolution of the Republican Party:

Long before the advent of Donald Trump, the Republican Party had been shifting rightward, pulled in that direction by its incorporation of Southern racists and Christian evangelicals.  This political reorientation sped up after the election of Barack Obama sent white supremacists into a frenzy of rage and self-pity. [snip]

As president, Trump has not only displayed a remarkable contempt for truth, law, civil liberties, the poor, civil rights, and women’s rights, but catered to the wealthy, the corporations, white supremacists, and religious fanatics.  He has also proved adept at inciting hatreds among his rightwing followers through racist, xenophobic diatribes delivered at mass rallies and through propaganda messages. Meanwhile, he has forged close alliances with his authoritarian counterparts abroad.  Either out of fear or love, Republican officeholders cling ever more tenaciously to him as the nation’s Supreme Leader.  If the GOP is not yet a fascist party, it is well on its way to becoming one.

Meanwhile, those same weaselly enablers who've gone all- in on defending Bone Spurs' impeachable conduct are throwing everything against the wall to see if anything sticks:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham suggested Sunday that Republicans should try to change Senate rules governing impeachment if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to withhold the charges against President Trump — an unlikely 11th-hour bid to begin a trial within days without the actual documents.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was unequivocal in a Senate floor speech on Friday that “we can’t hold a trial without the articles; the Senate’s own rules don’t provide for that.” But Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of Trump, floated the idea of a unilateral GOP move, saying he would work with McConnell to allow the Senate to proceed without the two charges against Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The suggestion, while unlikely due to the high threshold of votes required for changing Senate impeachment rules, underscores the pressure some Trump allies feel as the president stews over the impeachment delay.

Moscow Mitch and Huckleberry Graham are squirming along with Bone Spurs.  It's a pleasing spectacle, as well as being a completely necessary one.  A significant majority of Americans want to see a real trial, with real witnesses and evidence.  Democrats are holding the strong hand and shouldn't fold.

Finally, we would highly recommend a visit to Infidel 753's link round- up for many, many more links to posts of interest.  Please go check it out!

Republicans Stand With White Nationalism; Some Media Finally Learning?

The House of Representatives passed a resolution last night condemning the racist tweets of malignant bone spur Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump.  We like the truthful and straightforward way the Washington Post framed it on their front page:

A divided House voted Tuesday to condemn President Trump’s racist remarks telling four minority congresswomen to “go back” to their ancestral countries, with all but a handful of Republicans dismissing the rebuke as harassment while many Democrats pressed their leaders for harsher punishment of the president.

The imagery of the 240-to-187 vote was stark: A diverse Democratic caucus cast the president’s words as an affront to millions of Americans and descendants of immigrants, while Republican lawmakers — the vast majority of them white men — stood with Trump against a resolution that rejected his “racist comments that have legitimized fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.” (our emphasis)

All but four Republicans voted against the resolution (a fifth being recent apostate Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan).  We wish them well in their future careers after they're primaried out of office by frothing red hats.

While it's not at all surprising that, at all levels, the white nationalist Party of Trump has nothing resembling a moral conscience anymore, we're increasingly surprised at the turn our hometown newspaper has taken, at least on this particular topic.  (We should also note that on the NBC Nightly News last night, Lester Holt referred to the Trump tweets as racist, several days after they were weaseling it as "some have called racist." We imagine there's been some professional and public blowback that's resulted in getting these media outlets to finally call a racist a racist.  Baby steps.)  No one, in any walk of life, who sees what's going on in this country should be silent, least of all the media.  The stakes are too real and too high.

BONUS: Just as they began to savor their victory, Rep. Al Green (TX) promptly stepped on it by filing articles of impeachment against Trump, a premature move that will put the majority of Dems in opposition prior to Robert Mueller's testimony, and that will give Trump a diversion from his racist tweet debacle. As progressive Dem Rep. Jaime Raskin (MD) said, “I'm enough of a political pragmatist to believe that you call votes when you think you can win them, not when you think you can lose them.”

BONUS II:  While some in the media may be learning, some are obstinately missing the whole point.

(Photo: Blinded by the white -- the House Republican caucus takes its oath to defend racist white nationalism)

Sunday Reflection - On Mental Health

"... It is bad enough that malevolent online hoaxers make it difficult to tell the difference between fact and fiction, but when you no longer care about discerning that difference, when truth matters less to you than protecting your political turf, you are a virus in the body politic of a democratic nation. You are an infection that threatens the ability of free people to understand their world and make competent decisions about it."  -- Leonard Pitts, Jr., on the 42 percent (!) of Republicans who, in a study by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, "said they always regard as “fake news” accurate news stories that cast a favored politician or group in a negative light." 

Or, as Pitts says, they're "out of their damn minds."

Another Failed Conversion

Morning Joke co- host Joe "Squint" Scarborough has recently loudly proclaimed that he's no longer a Republican, courtesy of the Category 5 shitstorm regime of Donald "Rump" Trump, whose candidacy he gave untold hours of favorable, free coverage on MSNBC. In an op/ ed in the Washington Post this morning, Squint bemoans the rather obvious fact that "The Republican Party left its senses." After crowning himself an "independent," he then leaves his senses:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham has long predicted that the Republican and Democrats’ 150-year duopoly will end. The signs seem obvious enough. When my Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994, it was the first time the GOP had won the House in a generation. The two parties have been in a state of turmoil ever since. [snip] 

Political historians will one day view Donald Trump as a historical anomaly. But the wreckage visited of this man will break the Republican Party into pieces — and lead to the election of independent thinkers no longer tethered to the tired dogmas of the polarized past. When that day mercifully arrives, the two-party duopoly that has strangled American politics for almost two centuries will finally come to an end. And Washington just may begin to work again. 

Conveniently bypassing his own role as a Congressman during the Gingrich years when demonizing Democrats and impeaching President Clinton were at the top of the Republican agenda, Squint now has seen the light, and it's ... that both sides are equally polarized??  No. And, no.  (See the 2012 book by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks," briefly summarized here.) If that term "two- party duopoly" has a familiar ring to it, it's because it's the catch- phrase of the execrable "No Labels" group, that halfway house for ex- Republicans and their shills and opportunists, supported by the likes of former Bush strategist and ABC political wanker Matthew Dowd and Karl Rove booster Ron Fournier. These are former enablers and active participants in the polarization of American politics, who are now unable and/or unwilling to see what their important contributions have been, and who scurry away from the wreckage telling themselves that they always represented the sensible, hallowed middle ground. Bullshit.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., has a reality check for all these "two- party duopoly" liars and opportunists, and specifically for the spineless folks in the media still wishing to appear "unbiased" about the horror unfolding around them:

I keep reading and seeing all these stories on America’s political polarization, the great divide between left and right. Ted Koppel did a couple such reports for “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Robert Samuelson wrote a column on it for The Washington Post, Andrew Soergel pondered the question in U.S. News and World Report. 

We have explored the role of social media, the loss of the Fairness Doctrine and the city/country divide in creating this break. But no one — at least, no one I’ve seen — has explored what seems to me the most glaringly obvious factor. We are not, after all, divided because Americans pulled back from the center and retreated into extremism. 

No, we are divided because one party did. And it wasn’t the Democrats. [snip] 

A party that once provided a sober conservative counterweight to the Democrats’ more liberal impulses has flat out lost its mind, given itself over to rage, fear, schoolyard taunts and bizarre conspiracy theories. Which leaves me impatient with those who frame our political divide as if the issue were that left and right had equally abandoned the center. No fair observer can believe that. 

To the contrary, it becomes more obvious every day that we are where we are because something is very wrong with the GOP. To not acknowledge and report that, apparently out of some misguided notion that doing so wouldn’t be “fair and balanced” is, in itself, deeply unfair and unbalanced. In our terror of being called biased, we in media have neutered ourselves, abandoned our watchdog function.

When this same standard is applied to actual former accomplices in the Republican Party "losing its mind" like Scarborough, it strips away the false equivalence that protects them in their belief that they were never tethered to or advanced the "dogmas" they now denounce, and that they did nothing wrong (and they'll never do it again!). What we see when all is stripped away is just another opportunist running away from his failures in order to re- invent himself as a credible critic. Sad!

Morning Reading - Trump And The Republicans

As the slow- rolling disaster that is the regime of neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump picks up speed as it heads toward its ultimate fate, some thoughts on where we are right now (our emphasis throughout):

Conservative Paul Wehner on the Crackpot- in- Chief:

“We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” said conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House. “And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.” 

Who or what's feeding the lunacy?

Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist who once ran Breitbart, has spoken with Trump at length about his view that the “deep state” is a direct threat to his presidency. 

Advisers pointed to Bannon’s frequent closed-door guidance on the topic and Trump’s agreement as a fundamental way of understanding the president’s behavior and his willingness to confront the intelligence community — and said that when Bannon spoke recently about the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” he was also alluding to his aim of rupturing the intelligence community and its influence on the U.S. national security and ­foreign policy consensus.

But, it's not just Rump. Paul Krugman on a party unfit to govern:

"[T]he broader Republican quagmire — the party’s failure so far to make significant progress toward any of its policy promises — isn’t just about Mr. Trump’s inadequacies. The whole party, it turns out, has been faking it for years. Its leaders’ rhetoric was empty; they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they’ve never bothered to understand how anything important works." 

David Letterman offers his thoughts:

“We don’t need more confirmation that there’s something wrong with Donald Trump,” he said. “Let’s instead find ways to rebuild what is rational. And the Democrats, goddamn it, get a little backbone, get a little spine.” 

It will take courage -- heretofore unseen -- in our political leadership to move this process through to its conclusion. We can do our part as citizens to bolster the resolve of our elected officials to "do your job," to save our country from the darkness that's unfolding around us. But, remember, in the end it's about organizing, registering and voting. The problem goes beyond Rump; the problem is that power has been vested in a political party that has no plan except to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable -- and so far, fortunately, they can't even figure out how to do that efficiently.

(Image: The General Chaos goes down.)

President Obama Comments On Cowardly Republicans Feeding The Terrorist Narrative

More, please:

“When you start seeing individuals in positions of responsibility suggesting that Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land, that feeds the ISIL narrative,” the president continued. “It’s counterproductive, and it needs to stop.”

“When candidates [Chris "Krispykreme" Christie] say, we wouldn’t admit three-year-old orphans — that’s political posturing. When individuals [J.E.B.!, Rupert "Aargh" Murdoch, and "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz] say that we should have a religious test and that only Christians — proven Christians — should be admitted — that’s offensive and contrary to American values.” 

“These are the same folks oftentimes who suggest that they’re so tough that just talking to Putin or staring down ISIL, or using some additional rhetoric somehow is going to solve the problems out there,” he said.

“But apparently, they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion. First, they were worried about the press being too tough on them during debates. Now they’re worried about three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t sound very tough to me.”  (our emphasis)

If there's anything more revealing of the sham "Christian," racist, xenophobic, small bore Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Crazy Party, trying to score political points off of wretched refugees (the vast, vast majority of whom aren't even coming to America) has to be the clincher.  This, from the group of chickenhawk neo- cons who bungled us into Iraq, paving the way for ISIS.

Giving credit where due, some right- wing Republican scribes aren't happy with their party's ugly stance:  see here, here, here and here.

UPDATE:  Waaaaah!  The wittle wepublican babies are cwying!

Monday Reading - Hoisted On Their Own Petards

E.J. Dionne, Jr., and Doyle McManus both write about the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party's descent into anarchy (most evident in their House caucus), and see a common element.  First, McManus:

After his decision to retire, [Speaker John "Mr. Tangerine Man"] Boehner denounced the GOP radicals as “false prophets” who misled their own voters. They “whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know — they know! — are never going to happen,” he said last week.

But don't feel too bad for him: Boehner stood by while that whipping took place.

“Now he's saying the House has been hijacked by radicals, but the pilots of this airline gave the hijackers first-class seats,” Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a longtime Congress-watcher, told me. “They encouraged them, incited them, promised them things. And now the hijackers want what they were promised.”  (our emphasis)

McManus also notes the irony of fellow "leader" Rep. Kevin "I'm Not A Pod Person" McCarthy, one of the "Young Guns" who was elected in 2006, being instrumental in bringing so many of the ultra-right "Freedom Caucus" nihilist freaks into office in 2010 and thereafter, the freaks who just ended his non- illustrious political career.  E. J. Dionne, Jr., picks it up from there:

Let’s go back to 2010 and see what conservative politicians were saying.

“They think if they make government so large and the debt so big it will be impossible to reverse it,” one Republican warned ominously of the Democrats. “Who would have thought America could be going the way it’s going now? With government taking over businesses? With government taking over health care? We’ve always believed in freedom as a country but now we’re starting to understand that we have to fight for it.” The goal: “unshackling the grip that Washington has on so much of our lives.”

The GOP leadership, he said, lost its way. “The Republican base was angry about the way the party had betrayed its principles,”declared this firebrand, referring to the George W. Bush years. “Under Republican leadership in the early 2000s, spending and government got out of control. And as government grew, there were scandals and political compromises.”

The author of these words: Kevin McCarthy in a 2010 book called “Young Guns” he wrote with Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. Cantor is gone, defeated by tea partyers in 2014. Ryan has good reason to fear the consequences of trying to lead the crowd he and his colleagues helped bring to Congress.

As we noted before, the struggle going on most visibly in the House (but also among the candidates in the Republican presidential clown car bus) is one between noisy lunatics (the "Freedom Caucus,"  Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Piyush Jindal, etc.) who, as Dionne says, are at least upfront about their dystopian, nihilist agenda, and sub rosa lunatics (a.k.a., the "Governing Caucus," J.E.B.!, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, etc.), who have the same policy goals but prefer to win elections in order to implement them.  The puerile pundit class would still like you to ignore that, but it's increasingly difficult for them to argue that the inmates haven't always been in charge of the Republican asylum.

UPDATE:  Paul Krugman on the search for the best Republican con man to "save the party":

How will the chaos that the crazies, I mean the Freedom Caucus, have wrought in the House get resolved? I have no idea. But as this column went to press, practically the whole Republican establishment was pleading with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, to become speaker. He is, everyone says, the only man who can save the day.

What makes Mr. Ryan so special? The answer, basically, is that he’s the best con man they’ve got. His success in hoodwinking the news media and self-proclaimed centrists in general is the basis of his stature within his party. Unfortunately, at least from his point of view, it would be hard to sustain the con game from the speaker’s chair.

To understand Mr. Ryan’s role in our political-media ecosystem, you need to know two things. First, the modern Republican Party is a post-policy enterprise, which doesn’t do real solutions to real problems. Second, pundits and the news media really, really don’t want to face up to that awkward reality.  (our emphasis)

The Republican Struggle: Noisy Lunatics V. Sub Rosa Lunatics

Nancy LeTourneau has a good read this afternoon about the "post-policy" nihilists of the far-far-right "Freedom Caucus" in the House, and why the leadership struggle is all about tactics, not about the substance of Republican politics.  Here's an extended excerpt:

What happened is that members of the Freedom Caucus got elected to be post-policy and to see their agenda of slash and burn implemented. But establishment Republicans wanted to go back to the good-old-days when you don’t alienate most of the country by talking so truthfully about your real intentions. In other words, they knew that governing meant pivoting away from being post-policy and going back to the Republican standard of being what David Roberts called post-truth.

Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They’ve realized that their rhetoric doesn’t have to bear any connection to their policy agenda. They can go through different slogans, different rationales, different fights, depending on the political landscape of the moment. They need not feel bound by previous slogans, rationales, or fights. They’ve realized that policy is policy and politics is politics and they can push for the former while waging the latter battle on its own terms. The two have become entirely unmoored.

This is what some people are referring to when they say that the conflict between the Freedom Caucus and establishment Republicans is all about tactics rather than substance. The all agree on the latter, the establishment folks just don’t want the lunatics to be so damn truthful about it!

On the tee-vee "news" shows this weekend, you're not going to see that dynamic discussed, of course.  The discussion rather will be of the usual variety:  personalities, speculation, what they're hearing from their sources, blah blah blah.  Oh, they may alternate between Joe Biden is- he- or- isn't- he, and the media's idea of a "policy wonk" Paul "Lyin'" Ryan is- he- or- isn't- he chatter, but it will skate on the familiar surface that doesn't allow anyone to get too upset about the obvious- to- all- who- have- eyes- and- ears bughouse craziness that has been accelerating unabated in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid Party for decades.  It's the continuing, willful blindness that has led us to the point where this person is being cajoled to run for Speaker of the House to "save the party:"

If he's your "savior," you are long past saving.

Republicans React Predictably To Iran Deal: "Verdict First -Then The Facts" (UPDATED)

Predictably, Republicans were quick to condemn the historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program negotiated with that nation by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union.   As Dana Milbank points out, knowing the details of the agreement (included its technical annexes) wasn't as important to Republicans as was getting out those nasty sound bites:

By about 9 a.m., House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had both reached conclusions. Boehner said that Obama “abandoned his own goals,” that the deal would put Iran on “a break-out threshold to produce a nuclear bomb,” and that it would “only embolden Iran — the world’s largest sponsor of terror.”

“It sounds,” a reporter later said to Boehner, “like you’ve already rejected it.”

“I want to review all the facts,” the speaker replied.

Verdict first — then the facts.

Among the worst offenders was struggling- for- airtime Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry J. Butchmeup"* Graham (R-SC), who headed to the fainting couch with his hair on fire:

“You have created a possible death sentence for Israel,” he declared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“This is a virtual declaration of war against Sunni Arabs,” he said.

“This is the most dangerous, irresponsible step I have ever seen in the history of watching the Mideast. Barack Obama, John Kerry, have been dangerously naive,” he added.

Of course,when asked if he'd seen the agreement, Huckleberry J. said, "No."

Then there's this reprehensible "moderate."

Would you expect any other response from people who have been reflexively anti- anything President Obama touched for the past 6 years (including, yes, his plan for health insurance reform that was essentially the Republican plan just over a decade ago)?  But, as another op/ ed points out, those voices are more outliers in world opinion than ever before:

In the wake of the agreement, Netanyahu called Tuesday “one of the darkest days in world history.” Republican politicians made similar strident attacks, but the critics appeared to be outliers. The pact has the support of most major nations. Even Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates offered measured comments. Obama seems to have won this round. Netanyahu and his GOP allies are indignant about the deal, but they are taking on the world.

They're also taking on American public opinion, which supports the administration 2 to 1.

For those interested in a readable summary of the historic agreement on Iran's nuclear program, this works pretty well. 

* H/t Charles Pierce.

BONUS:  Andy Borowitz has his special take on conservative outrage.

BONUS II:  Or, as Clay Jones puts it:

(Clay Jones, claytoonz.com)

Today's Reading - Of Cranks, Charlatans, Deadbeats And The Stupid

Today, we're starting off with Paul Krugman's discussion of deadbeat Gov. Scott "Kochhead" Walker's  (R-Kochland) pandering to the Republican Party's economic charlatans and cranks:

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is said to be a rising contender for the Republican presidential nomination. So, on Wednesday, he did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks. [snip] 

But, on Wednesday, Mr. Walker, in what was clearly a rite of passage into serious candidacy, spoke at a dinner at Manhattan’s “21” Club hosted by the three most prominent supply-siders: Art Laffer (he of the curve); Larry Kudlow of CNBC; and Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation. Politico pointed out that Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, attended a similar event last month. Clearly, to be a Republican contender you have to court the powerful charlatan caucus. (our emphasis)

By the way, that would be the same gathering of charlatans and cranks that were treated to has-been demagogue and philanderer Rudy "Noun, Verb, 9/11" Giuliani's characteristically despicable remarks about President Obama not "loving America."

Why did we call Scott "Kochhead" Walker a "deadbeat"?  Let Beth Ethier explain:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker touts the generous tax cuts he's pushed through since 2010 to bolster his image as one of the 2016 GOP presidential field’s most high-profile fiscal conservatives. (One economically conservative activist told Slate's Betsy Woodruff that Walker's 2014 gubernatorial election was more important to him than every other election in the country combined.) But those tax cuts have not created the hoped-for economic growth, and even after big reductions in public spending, Wisconsin is in the midst of a budget crisis: Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Walker administration will skip a debt payment of $108 million that is due in May.

That would be the same "Kochhead" Walker who wants to give the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team $200 million for a new arena Walker.

As for The Republican Stupid, readers of this blog should be well versed in The Republican Stupid, given our long-running, on-going feature "Today's Dispatches From The Stupid Party."  Damon Linker (a great name for an aggregating blogger, by the way), opines that even more outrageous than the Republican pandering to the economic charlatans and cranks is their pandering to another of the party's "demographics":

And really, isn't that what's most outrageous about the contemporary Republican Party — how ready and even eager it is to go slumming for support in the fever swamps of white cultural resentment? [snip] 

Far greater civic damage is done by the GOP pandering to (and flattering the prejudices of) right-wing cultural populists. [snip] 

That's what's inspired such sparkling policy gems as Mitt Romney's proposal that undocumented workers "self-deport" and Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax cut gimmick. It's also given us Sen. Ted Cruz — a politician whose every word and action seems driven by the singular desire to transform himself into an archetype of the median Fox News viewer.   

And then there's Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who's already in the lead to win this election cycle's award for Achievements in Pandering.

Linker then discusses "Kochhead" Walker's adventures in edumacational gutting "reform" at the University of Wisconsin and his pandering on whether or not he believes in evolution.

So, there you have it:  a party that's of the worst, by the worst and for the worst.

Sunday Cartoon - They Just Can't Help Themselves

(click on image to enlarge)

(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Despite the media's desire to create a narrative of the "ready to govern, center-right, moderate new Republican majority," the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ White Supremacist Party just can't help themselves.

The Stakes In "The Fight Of Obama's Life"

Jon Chait discusses the stakes in the showdown with the House Republican Crackpot Caucus over raising the debt ceiling:

If outsiders have failed to grasp the motivations of the House Republicans, puzzling at their odd redoubling of ideological fervor since November, they have likewise mistaken Obama. Everything I have seen from Obama suggests he understands that he cannot repeat his blunder of 2011, when he mistook the GOP’s debt-ceiling threat for an invitation to engage in normal fiscal bargaining.

Obama can’t tame the monster he created gradually; he has to kill it completely. Bargaining his way through this crisis would do Obama no good, even if he could get through it by offering up a meager or even symbolic concession. Anything that allows Republicans to believe they can trade a debt-ceiling threat for policy concessions simply creates a new hostage crisis the next time the debt ceiling comes up. This negotiation is Obama’s only chance to halt the routinization of debt-ceiling extortion.

Chait's piece should be required reading in the West Wing, though one hopes they've long ago internalized what the stakes are and why they can't cede an inch to the lunatics and anarchists in the Republican Party.

A Rare Reality Check

A former Senator had this to say in an op/ed in  The Hill today:

Most Americans these days are simply ignoring Republicans. And they should. 

The self-promotional babble of a few has become the mainstream of Republican political thought. It has marginalized the influence of the party to an appalling degree. 

That former Senator?  Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who excoriates his party's Crackpot Caucus for its "defund Obamacare or else" extortionist stategery over the raising the debt ceiling.  He goes on to say:

Most Americans do not seek purity; they seek answers to the everyday problems they confront. They expect their government to be of assistance in addressing those problems, not to aggravate them through artificial and self-inflicted economic mismanagement, such as having a default crisis that could easily be avoided. 

If the Republican Party ignores this concern and constantly speaks to an ever-narrower segment of the population, it is not going to be viable for long, no matter how vocal that small band of people may be. 

Finding adults and/or sane people in the Republican Party these days is more and more a challenge, but they are there (see posting below).  They just need to have the courage to stand up and speak out.

BONUS:  The American public has already taken a stand:

The CNBC poll reported that by a 59-19 percent margin, respondents opposed linking defunding of "Obamacare" to a possible shutdown starting on October 1, or to a failure to raise the government's borrowing authority, meaning Washington may not be able to pay all of its bills by sometime in October or early November.

The Republican Fantasyland

As we noted yesterday, some far-right Republicans are eager to use the platform of hearings on Syria to beat their favorite dead horse(s).  But, as Harold Meyerson writes, forcing them to confront possible military action in Syria has the effect, potentially, of tethering at least some of them back to planet Earth:

If the American right increasingly seems to occupy an alternative planet, that’s largely because its media outlets — we can throw Fox News into the mix — dwell on stories so exquisitely calibrated to excite the right that they may not be stories at all. The New Black Panther Party? The Epidemic of Voter Fraud? The calculated perfidy of Benghazi? The impeachable crime of Obamacare (a socialist scam actually modeled on a proposal from a conservative think tank 20 years ago)? It’s not the editorials and opinionating of right-wing broadcasters and journalists that are driving the right into fantasyland. It’s the tales they spin into stories and the time and space they devote to events that never actually happened or that they surreally misconstrue.

By throwing the Syrian conundrum to Congress, Obama has at least confronted Republicans with a real-world choice. Since Saturday, the drumbeat for closing down the government has been muted in its usual haunts. 

It remains to be seen how long -- or even if -- this dose of reality will spill over into other matters Meyerson touches on (the debt ceiling confrontation, various Obamacare sabotage schemes, etc.).  Frankly, our bet is that this party that has been in various states of delirium for going on 40 years isn't about to put the interests of the people or the nation ahead of its "concocted crises."  That's because Republicans have done such a thorough job of painting themselves into an ideological corner where, since they own the "facts," they have to prevail no matter what cost.  As Meyerson says:

As the share of Americans who support and identify with Republicans shrinks in the polls, the faithful who remain have taken on the aspects of a cult — secure in the knowledge of “facts” that aren’t facts, passionate about causes whose very existence bewilders their compatriots, determined to punish any believers who stray from the fold.

Not much room for maneuvering or optimism there.

Strange Headfellows

In an interview with Campus Reform, fugitive from Swedish justice and Wikileaks indiscriminate leaker Julian "Ass Is Part of Who I Am" Assange revealed his American political preferences (via LGF):

College-aged support for libertarians and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) represents the United States’ “only hope” in politics, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told Campus Reform early Friday morning.

“The only hope as far as electoral politics… presently, is the libertarian section of the Republican party,” said Assange, in response to a question about the recent swell of college-aged and youth-based support for libertarianism.

“The libertarian aspect of the Republican Party is presently the only useful political voice really in the U.S. Congress,” said Assange. “[I] am a big admirer of Ron Paul and Rand Paul for their very principled positions in the U.S. Congress on a number of issues.” [snip]

Assange, who was speaking in an online video forum, hosted by the transparency organization OurSay.org, also praised American Journalist Matt Drudge saying he is responsible for breaking down the “self-censorship” of the American mainstream media.

“Matt Drudge is a news media innovator… It is as a result of the self-censorship of the establishment press in the United States that gave Matt Drudge such a platform and so of course he should be applauded for breaking a lot of that censorship,” said Assange.  (our emphasis)

This, along with fellow Paultard and Putin houseguest Edward "Shoot My Balls" Snowden's drama, illustrates why some progressives need to be very careful in picking their "heroes."  In our view, both Assange and Snowden veer onto the "anarcho-libertarian" nihilist edge of politics, wherein a sense of "ethical egoism" and unfocused action always trumps collective judgement.  =cough= AynRand =cough= To name-check far-right conspiracy fluffer Matt Drudge (!) as a media exemplar kinda gives Assange's game away, too. 

But Gary Norton sums it up best, first on the link to Paul and the Republican Party, then on Drudge:

Yup. An anti-government, anti-Social Security, anti-Medicare and Medicaid, anti-civil rights, anti-choice, anti-LGBT, pro-business, anti-minimum wage, anti-40 hour work week, anti-union, basically anti-every piece of Democratic and progressive legislation that has ever been passed in this country Political Party and its nihilistic leaders are the only hope for America.

And Matt Drudge, a guy who has never found a right wing lie that he wasn't eager to spread, is Assange's idea of a "news reporter." Wonder if Assange has a tricorn hat, breeches and wig in his suitcase?

BONUS:  Also, Tomasky.

"Sabotage Governing"

Greg Sargent on Republican nihilism:

... [I]t goes well beyond Obamacare implementation and the relentless blockading of Obama nominees for the explicit purpose of preventing democratically-created agencies from functioning. We’ve slowly crossed over into something a bit different. It’s now become accepted as normal that Republicans will threaten explicitly to allow harm to the country to get what they want, and will allow untold numbers of Americans to be hurt rather than even enter into negotiations over the sort of compromises that lie at the heart of basic governing. [snip]

... The current GOP campaign isn’t just about opposing the Affordable Care Act or arguing for its repeal. It’s about making it harder for uninsured Americans to gain access to coverage under a law passed and signed by a democratically elected Congress and President, and upheld by the Supreme Court, in service of the political goal of making it a greater liability for Democrats in the 2014 elections (the law, after all, isn’t going to get repealed).  (our emphasis)

Never have so many done so much to do so little for so many down and suffering.  What a bunch of immoral, sociopathic mountebanks.

BONUS:  Looks like even McPaper is noticing. Welcome to the party!

The Republican War on Women - Women's Health Edition

This appears to be Bandwagon Day in the Republican War on Women.  Now that the once-foiled Texas bill intruding on a woman's reproductive freedom is poised to pass, the confederate State of North Carolina is pulling the same shite:

The outlines of the restrictions will be familiar: forcing clinics to meet the standards of outpatient surgical centers, requiring clinics to have transfer agreements with local hospitals, requiring a doctor to be present throughout the administration of a medical abortion (which, since a medical abortion involves taking pills two days apart, is a somewhat hazy requirement), and more. North Carolina Republicans appear to have learned their lessons from the organized opposition to Texas' anti-abortion bill, and rushed theirs to the floor of the Senate in epically sneaky fashion...

To make sure all the lizard-brained Rethug bases are touched, the provision is attached to a bill banning...wait for it...Sharia law. (What, there wasn't a nullification bill handy?)

Not to be outdone in the race to the bottom, dehydrated former golden boy Hispanic savior Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio is introducing a bill in the U.S. Senate to ban abortions after the 20th week, as the Texas bill would do.  Of course, Glug Glug knows the bill has no chance of going anywhere (though that never stopped Rethugs from voting to repeal Obamacare every 6 hours).  Speculation is he's trying to repair his cred with the teahadists/ nativists who are incensed at his support of the Senate immigration reform bill. No, no se puede.

Oh, BTW, how's that Republican rebranding coming along?

Disability Rights Treaty Goes Down at the Hands of Far-Right

Here's Lawrence Downes on the scene in the Senate as the cowardly morons Rethuglican senators got ready to vote on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (to conform international rights to those Americans already enjoy):

"One by one, according to Roll Call, the senators approached Mr. [Bob] Dole to pat his shoulder or clasp his hand, making gestures of respect for the man who was for many years the Republican majority leader.

"Then he was wheeled away, and all but a handful of the Republicans bailed out on him. The treaty failed. It needed a two-thirds vote to pass, or 67 votes, and fell six short.

"So much for America’s support of a global agreement 'to promote, protect, and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities.'

"The vote was a triumph for Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum and others on the hard-right loon fringe, who have been feverishly denouncing the treaty as a United Nations world-government conspiracy to kill disabled children (you can look it up)."

Bob Dole, of course, is a decorated, disabled American veteran from World War II, as well as the former Republican presidential standard bearer in 1996. He was there to voice support for passage of the treaty; unfortunately, however, only a handful of Rethuglican Senators voted for it. So we are left once again with America justly ridiculed because of the actions of the far-right bums who spoke and voted against the treaty. They aren't fit to clean out anyone's bed pan.

BONUS: Also, see Charles P. Pierce on how this shows yet again that there is no such thing as a "decent Republican."

(h/t P.E.C., whose outrage we share)

Mammoth Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

Watch the attempts in the weeks ahead by Rethugs to claim that it's their candidate that isn't making the sale, not their reactionary, dangerous policies.

UPDATE: That didn't take long: wing nuts at the "Values Voters" poo-fest blame the messenger, not the message.

Quote of the Day - Original Republican Edition

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." -- Abraham Lincoln, December 3, 1861. Republican common sense 150 years ago; Rethuglican heresy today. Sic transit gloria, GOP. (h/t Driftglass)