Wingnuts: Lying Liars Edition

From Daily Kos: Fred Barnes: Only 1,361 days to go. And then rich old white guys will be in charge again. Because he's a failure, don't you know.

Ygleisas: Susan Collins and Pandemic Flu

Boy, it sure is great that Susan Collins made sure we didn’t waste any money on pandemic flu preparations in the Recovery Act. That’s moderation I can believe in!

Joe Sudbay (DC):

How much longer will the GOP Senate filibuster the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius? The Republicans always put politics ahead of the national interest...we're in the middle of a "public health emergency" and the GOP is playing political games. When the Senate convenes today at 2:00 PM, Harry Reid should demand an up-or-down vote today.

Sully: The GOP Base Gets More Radical

On marriage, immigration and spending, the intensity of the far right is increasing, not decreasing, according to the Politico:

"My e-mail overfloweth," said David Overholtzer, a longtime GOP activist in western Iowa's Pottawattamie County. "Amnesty is still very much a hot-button and gay marriage especially is here in Iowa. The view is that we've got to hold our legislators' and governors' feet to the fire."

"I’ve never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry," said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state's RNC committeeman.

Palin awaits.

Jon Meacham: For now, President Obama has, predictably, taken a middle course. He has banned the controversial tactics at issue, released the memos and believes that further inquiry is more likely to fuel partisan fury than it is to shed light on what must be done going forward. "We live in a dangerous world, and the president thinks that if we are consumed with relitigating the past, then it will be all the harder to focus on the challenges we are still facing," White House senior adviser David Axelrod told me last week.

• When is the media going to wake up and understand that "partisan fury" currently defines the right, and isn't going to get any better? When are they going to start reporting on Fox and Limbaugh whipping them up with anti-Obama propaganda?
  

C&L: Carl Levin: Republicans Were Given Every Opportunity to Dissent to SASC Report

Heather Sunday Apr 26, 2009 10:03am

Carl Levin shoots down Kit Bond over the Republicans Johnny-come-lately dissent to the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the release of more pictures of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bond: First Carl I would say that there's a very strong dissent from five members of your committee who said that your report was fallacious, it's counter productive and your report itself was the one that offers the greatest opportunity for negative publicity and the high level abusive techniques that you talk about.

[.....]

Levin: I've got to answer that one thing because I'm chairman of the committee. There was no objection to this report. Seven Republicans were there when we voted on it. Not one dissented. We had months and months of opportunity for any dissenting views. That's the report. It's a unanimous report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham and other Republicans specifically were there when this approved. Had every opportunity to file a dissent. Did not do that and it seems to me that it is clearly the action of a bi-partisan Senate Armed Services Committee.

So they now a few Republicans to say they disagree. They've got a right to do so but they had an opportunity which they didn't use.

John Amato:

Carl Levin draws the torture line from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib and blames Bush administration officials including Donald Rumsfeld, who authorized torture and passed it around.

Levin: and so the threat to our troops came when these techniques, these abuse and coercive techniques were authorized by top level administration officials, Rumsfeld specifically authorized these kinds of techniques; nudity, use of dog handlers. In Guantanamo, they went directly to Abu Ghraib. Our bi-partisan report, 200 page report directly connects the authorization for the use of these techniques in Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib. That is what endangers our troops.

And a typical practice by Bush apologists to to attack the messenger which is Carl Levin and the SASC report. It passed in committee without any dissents with all Republicans signing off on it, but now we have the disgraceful Kit Bonds of the right lying about the report openly. And when Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others embraced torture---they brought all this negative publicity on themselves and shame to our country.

Benen: MCCAIN ON 'BAD ADVICE'...

On CBS's "Face the Nation" this morning, John McCain dismissed the entire idea of criminal wrongdoing in relation to the Bush administration's torture policies. "No one," McCain said, "has alleged 'wrongdoing'" on the part of former administration officials. He added, "We need to put this behind us. We need to move forward."

In the same interview, however, McCain also said this:

"[Bybee] falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting, fundamentally, what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Look, under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture. We were in violation of that."

Right, we were in violation of that. It's kind of the point of the debate.

The problem, then, is with John McCain's definition of "wrongdoing." As Metavirus noted, the reference to the agreement endorsed by Reagan was the United Nations Convention Against Torture, signed in 1988. The Bush administration, McCain conceded, was "in violation of that."

Given this, it sure would be helpful if McCain could clarify matters for us. McCain believes Bush administration officials aren't guilty of "wrongdoing," so there's no need for any kind of investigation. McCain also believes Bush administration officials violated U.S. and international law.

So, I'm curious -- what, exactly, does McCain consider "wrongdoing"? And why should U.S. officials deliberately ignore evidence of violations of the law?

• Think Progress

  McCain claimed that "no one has alleged, quote, wrongdoing" on the part of Bush administration lawyers, only that they had given "bad advice." And yet minutes later McCain himself acknowledged that Bybee's advice led the U.S. to be "in violation" of both U.S. and international law. Watch it:

  Later on Face the Nation, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supports holding broad investigations about torture, pointed out that McCain supports a commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis. "But just as important as losing our money, what happens when we lose our national honor? That's what we should look at," Leahy said.

• As for McCain's confusion about the meaning of the word "wrongdoing, I'm not sure the word means what he thinks it means:
  
  

Benen: THE WATERGATE COMPARISON...

There was one other thing John McCain said on "Face the Nation" yesterday that stood out for me. The Arizona Republican was explaining his belief that accountability for Bush administration officials responsible for torture policies would be a mistake. He eventually told host Bob Schieffer:

"Finally, you were around when President Ford pardoned President Nixon. There were allegations of criminal activity on the part of the president of the United States. Most people in retrospect believe that Ford's pardon was right, because we moved on. We have got to move on."

Putting aside the question of whether Ford was right to pardon Nixon, it's an interesting comparison for McCain to make. Nixon, after all, had committed a series of crimes. He was poised to be removed from office before he resigned in disgrace. There was ample of evidence to suggest Nixon was guilty of criminal wrongdoing.

McCain, by bringing up Nixon, seems to be putting Bush in a similar category. Indeed, it's almost as if McCain sees a historical parallel -- Nixon broke the law as part of the Watergate scandal, but was ultimately let off the hook. The Bush administration broke the law by utilizing torture techniques, and, the argument goes, should also be left to history's judgment.

With this in mind, I wonder what McCain and others like him will consider the next logical step. Will we start to hear conservative clamoring for President Obama to pardon Bush and his team? Who'll be the first high-profile Republican voice to say, "Obama says he wants to look forward; he can prove it by ending the controversy once and for all and pardoning Bush"?

Amato (C&L): Republicans love calling this administration a "Banana Republic"

The right-wing pundits love to hurl insults and ridiculous talking points about the Obama administration. The newest one to date is that what we've really got here is a "Banana Republic." The media won't tell you this, so the blogs have to. Right-wingers were quite happy to try to prosecute Bill Clinton after he left office and weren't shy about their feelings.

Jamison Foser has the lowdown on the bottom feeders:

Gaps in the Right's "banana republic" rhetoric

... In fact, Sean Hannity argues in favor of investigations and prosecutions of past administrations -- as long as the past administrations are Democratic administrations.

In April of 2000, for example, when independent counsel Robert Ray (Ken Starr's successor) suggested that he might indict Bill Clinton when Clinton left office, Hannity said he thought that should happen. On January 21, 2001 -- the day after George W. Bush replaced Clinton in office -- Hannity reiterated that position. In March of 2001, Hannity argued that there should be a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton pardons, and that Clinton attorney general Janet Reno should be indicted...read on
--
What really lends this a through-the-looking-glass quality, however, is that the conservative media who now denounce potential investigations of torture by portraying it as a mere policy disagreement previously sought investigations of a pardon. Whether or not you think all of Clinton's pardon decisions were correct, there is pretty much nobody who denies that he had the authority to make those decisions -- so investigating the pardons essentially was investigating a policy disagreement. Torture, on the other hand, is not a policy disagreement; it is a crime. Thus, the Journal's case against investigating the Bush administration better applies to investigations of the Clinton administration -- investigations the Journal supported.

That's what the conservative media consists of: partisans offering inconsistent, insincere, and nonsensical arguments on behalf of torture and the depraved thugs who authorized it.

They are hypocrites, crooks and liars -- the whole lot of them.

Krugman: Apparatchiks

Adam Serwer writes about Jay Bybee’s attempt to get off the hook:

So Bybee knew he was breaking the law in allowing the use of torture, but you have to understand, he only did it because he really wanted to be a federal judge. That’s not exculpatory information, that’s motive.

Exactly right. But you have to understand what Bybee is: he’s someone who made a career as a movement conservative apparatchik. In his world, following orders and getting rewarded for his obedience was what it was all about; he’s completely shocked to find that the rules have changed.

And here’s the thing: most prominent Republicans are just the same. We wonder how someone as hapless as John Boehner could be minority leader, why one Congressman after another abjectly apologizes to Rush Limbaugh, and so on; the answer is that they’re hollow men, careerists who thought they had a safe ride. If someone like Newt Gingrich seems like a giant in his party these days, that’s because, say what you like about him (and I don’t like much about him!), he got into the business when doing so involved taking some actual risks.

And that, I think, is why the Republicans have fallen apart so completely since losing the election. Careerism is what held the party together; an environment in which the party no longer has the patronage to reward all its loyalists, and may not even be able to protect apparatchiks who broke the law, destroys the whole system.

Now, there are a lot of people with real conviction in the GOP these days. Unfortunately, those convictions include the idea that Barack Obama is a socialist, or maybe a fascist, that gays are the greatest threat we face, and … well, you get the picture. It’s a fervent base, but not, unless Obama really really messes up, an election-winning coalition.

Sic transit — and good riddance.

C&L: Eric Cantor Blames the Media for the Public Perception that the GOP are Obstructionists

Heather Sunday Apr 26, 2009 6:00pm

From The Situation Room April 23, 2009. Eric Cantor tries to blame the media for the perception that the GOP doesn't want to work with the President. When asked if there was going to be some cooperation in the future from the GOP, Cantor says there will be as long as the Democrats are willing to adopt Republican ideas. I think they already did by caving on some of those tax cuts the Republicans wanted, but Cantor and Blitzer seem to have forgotten about that.

Blitzer affords Cantor every opportunity to give some specifics about just what their "new" ideas are and I sure as hell didn't hear any. Without specifics it sounded like more of the same from him. Tax cuts, status quo on health insurance and "belt tightening" which is GOP double speak for cutting social spending.

Yeah that evil media never gives you guys a chance to let anyone know how you're cooperating with the President. Like you just had in this interview and failed to do. You even managed to get a shot in and call the other side which is at most generous centrist and hardly far left, extremist. That's a great way to get some cooperation. Name calling.

BLITZER: In this most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, by an almost 2-1 margin, 62 percent to 36 percent, they believe that the president is doing more than the GOP to try to reach some sort of cooperation with the other party.

Why does the American public think that the White House and the Democrats are more assertive in wanting to cooperate with you than the Republicans are?

CANTOR: Well, Wolf, I may lay some of the blame back on that -- on your colleagues in mainstream media. It's just not as appetizing, I guess, to cover the plans that we have and the attempts that we've made and we'll continue to make to reach out not only to the president and the White House, but to Speaker Pelosi, who, frankly, has been unwilling to bring a consensus-building group together to try and see a way to bring the agenda back from the extreme to the mainstream. But we're going to continue trying.

Full transcript below: (at link)