He's Lying When His Lips Are Moving

Rethuglican National Committee chair and human / weasel hybrid Reince "Prepuce" Priebus has a way of lying and snarling at the same time.  In that respect -- and many others -- he is the perfect face of his party.  On CBS' "Face The Schieffer" yesterday, Prepuce looked the host in the eye and claimed there was no rift in his dysfunctional party:

"BOB SCHIEFFER: Thank you very much. Eric Cantor got beat. Lindsey Graham won. How divided is the Republican Party right now?

REINCE PRIEBUS: Yeah, I don't think it's divided at all ..."

This certainly won't inspire confidence in Prepuce's or his party's grip on reality with, say, either the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other Big Bidness supporters of immigration reform (cough minimum wage workers) or the teatards opposing any reform at all.   And look at the petty infighting that was going on as Prepuce dissembled.  Teatard hate radio hack and Coulter knock-off Laura Ingraham exchanged jabs with Eric Cantor, with Ingraham suggesting that Cantor should have been traded to the Taliban for Sgt. Bergdahl.  Then there was Idaho's Rep. Raul "The Retriever" Labrador abruptly adjourning the Idaho Rethug Party convention amid acrimony between right-wing factions.  Every day brings more evidence of turmoil in the Rethug / New Confederate / Stupid Party, which just means that Prepuce will have to turn up the dial on his lying from "red hot" to "white hot."

(photo:  "I always tell the truth.")

Pretending to Care 101

Instead of extending unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed, the Rethuglican / Stupid Party is coaching their elected officials in how to appear compassionate while denying those benefits (among others).  Some of the suggested tone-deaf spin tries to put it in terms of "you're only encouraging laziness" by extending benefits vs. creating jobs (which the Rethugs won't do either).  Some of the other "tips" are sure to boomerang, like "unemployment is dropping, so what's the big deal?"(Wow, Rethugs acknowledging that under President Obama, unemployment is dropping -- thanks!).

The problem is, if the Rethug political class were actually doing something to create jobs (repairing/replacing infrastructure, for example),  rather than obstructing everything to gain political points, this effort at spin control might make sense in a perverse way.  But the fact that they want America to fail under this President, even at the expense of Americans who are hurting, is nothing short of despicable.

Unhappy 10th Anniversary, Iraq War - and the Nixon Tie-In

This is the 10th anniversary of the start of the glorious neo-con Iraq war of choice, a war that cost this nation over 4,000 lives,  over 32,000 wounded,  and over $800 billion, costs we will continue to pay for years to come.  And then there are the staggering costs of the war to the Iraqi people.  The war's architects -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. --  and the hallelujah chorus on the right and in the media have never been called to account in the manner they should have =cough = prison= cough= for the lives and treasure lost in this manufactured war;  after all, there were so many with blood on their hands and we are a nation looking forward, right?

So, what does Richard Nixon have to do with this (after all, he died years before, in 1994).  Well, what is now being reported of Nixon's role at a critical stage of the Vietnam War reminds us that these two Rethuglican presidents -- "patriots" Bush and Nixon -- would not let the truth, morality or the best interests of the United States interfere with their ambition:

"By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands". [snip]


It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.  He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

 

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal."

Which, of course, the South Vietnamese did.  So, as many as 22,000 Americans died in Vietnam following 1968 (including our cousin) because Nixon -- God damn him -- didn't want the peace talks to end the fighting before the election, because that might have led to Hubert Humphrey being elected.  And the war dragged on for another 5 years.

In summary, we have two "patriotic" Rethuglican presidents (are there any other kind?) who needlessly spilled the blood and treasure of the United States, and the people of Vietnam and Iraq, for ...what?

(h/t Mr. Pierce)