Pat Robertson's Advice to Lovers
Josh Marshall: Just Oy Shorter US News: Obama must accept the fact that his economic policies caused the economic crisis and soaring deficits.
Josh Marshall: Yeah, Those Were the Days
From TPM Reader PJ ...
Interesting to note how some people are getting worked up over Wanda Sykes and Obama's behavior at that dinner. Remember GW Bush joking about the "missing WMD's" when he appeared at the same event a few years back? IMHO, that was a truly low point for our nation-- a President laughing about the fact that nobody could find the nuclear weapons that provided the central rationale for his assault on Iraq, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
So Dick Cheney goes on CBS' Face the Nation to attack President Obama and defend his record.
Somehow, during the entire interview (conducted by Bob Schieffer), there was not one mention -- not one single mention -- of Iraq.
Before introducing Cheney, Schieffer did say he'd ask Cheney about his views on Iraq -- but Schieffer never did get around to doing so. It was missing, just like those WMDs Cheney used to scare us about.
More telling than Schieffer's failure to raise the question was the fact that Cheney never brought it up. It was the one thing he didn't even try to defend.
Which is sort of like saying the Detroit Lions had a great year last year, except for all the losses.
BarbinMD: Speaking Of Insane
Caught by The Washington Independent, a tweet from Newt Gingrich:
Just had remarkable interview with chris wallace on foxnews sunday. I asserted releasing terrorist trainees into america on welfare is insane
Yes, that would be insane. And as soon as someone suggests it, you can call them out for it, Newt.
And once at his twitter page, it was a like a car wreck you can't look away from. One that caught my eye:
Callista and I had a great dinner with greta van susteren and her husband john at one of my favorites l'auberge chez francois in great falls
Leaving aside his choice of dinner companions, L'Auberge Chez Francois? Paging Sean Hannity; this should generate at least as much outrage as Obama requesting spicy mustard for his burger did.
At the beginning of April, a Fox News poll asked respondents whether they believed that President Obama “wants the financial crisis to continue so government can take over more businesses and grow the federal government.” Only 23 percent said that they thought Obama wanted it to continue, but that minority view was recently endorsed by a top-ranking Republican official. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), the chairman of the NRCC, told the New York Times that he believes President Obama aims to “‘diminish employment and diminish stock prices‘ as part of a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to consolidate power”:His counterpart at the House Republicans’ committee, Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, may indeed face an uphill fight with his argument that Mr. Obama is not trying to create jobs. In an interview, Mr. Sessions cited rising unemployment in asserting that the administration intended to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate power.
Mr. Sessions, in his seventh term, said Mr. Obama’s agenda was “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.” By next fall, he predicted, voters may regain appreciation for the era of Republican governance when “many dreams were achieved,” the size of the economy doubled and employment and financial markets hit record levels.
- Steve Benen adds:
Now, expecting Americans to long for the days of Bush/Cheney is on its face comical, but let's not brush past the fact that an elected congressman and member of the Republican leadership believes the president of the United States deliberately wants to undermine the country and destroy capitalism. The elected leader of the country, Sessions argues for no apparent reason, is actively engaged in a campaign to weaken the country, on purpose.
This, of course, is insane. That Sessions was willing to say this, out loud and on the record, is compelling evidence that the Republicans' deranged hysteria is getting worse, not better.
It also reminded me of something Matt Yglesias wrote last month.
[T]o be fair, during the Bush years more than one person passed me this "14 Characteristics of Fascism" document in order to prove that under George W. Bush the United States had become a fascist regime. Overreaction to policies you don't like is a pretty understandable human impulse. The difference is that mainstream, prominent outlets usually try to restrain that kind of impulse. But this sort of over-the-top rhetoric isn't burbling from the grassroots up, it's being driven the very most prominent figures in conservative media and also by a large number of members of Congress.
Right. If some random right-wing blog or shock-jock argued that the president is intentionally ruining the economy and killing capitalism, as part of an incomprehensible campaign to consolidate power, it'd be easier to dismiss as just another conservative tantrum.
But Pete Sessions is an elected member of Congress. Republican lawmakers think so highly of his intellect, they put him in charge of the NRCC. And not even four months into Obama's first term, he's already delivering bizarre tirades to the New York Times.
For all the recent talk about what the Republican Party needs to do to get back on track, I might recommend a simple step for the top of the to-do list: stop being crazy.
- Greg Sargent
A spokesperson for NRCC chief Pete Sessions is not backing off Sessions’ surprising suggestion in an interview that Obama has a secret plot to kill the free enterprise system as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate and hold power.
In an interview published this morning in The New York Times, Sessions pointed to rising unemployment and said that the Obama administration was deliberately trying to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices.”
Sessions told the paper that this was part of an agenda on Obama’s part that is “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it.” Sessions’ comments were flagged this morning by The Huffington Post.
Asked for clarification, NRCC spokesperson Ken Spain emailed:
The Chairman was simply reiterating what many members of the Democratic Party have echoed over the past several weeks, which is that one-party dominance in Washington has further damaged our economy and undercut our country’s free enterprise system.
The claim appears to be that Sessions’ assertion of a secret plot on Obama’s part is akin to a neutral analysis of the detriments of one-party rule. If I had to guess, I’d say this clarification probably won’t stop Dems from pouncing on this today to amplify the “Party of No” message by casting it as another sign of the GOP’s unwillingness to offer constructive solutions.
- Think Progress adds:
Earlier today, ThinkProgress highlighted NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions’ (R-TX) claim that President Obama is intentionally trying to “‘diminish employment and diminish stock prices‘ as part of a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy to consolidate power.” Sessions’ paranoid theory got a powerful endorsement today from the de facto leader of the conservative movement, Rush Limbaugh. Noting new budget deficit projections out of the White House, Limbaugh declared that “the objective is unemployment.” “Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on,” added the right-wing talker. Listen here:
One of the key political trends of the moment is the merging of Independent and Democratic opinion, and today’s Gallup Poll seems to capture this, finding that two-thirds of Independents approve of Obama’s performance (click to enlarge):
Gallup finds, however, that only a small plurality of Independents says they’re likely or certain to vote for Obama in 2012.
Still, what’s striking here is that the percentage of Independents who approve of Obama is identical to the percentage of Republicans who disapprove of him — 66%.
In other words, Indys and Republicans are mirror images of each other on this question — yet another sign of the movement of Independents away from the Republican Party and of the increasing isolation of the GOP.
- wvng adds - remember that the self-identified GOP is polling at 20% of the total population, which makes these figures even worse.
Robert Gates reform-oriented defense budget would mean less money for some defense contractors and fewer jobs in the districts of some members of congress. Under the circumstances, I’m not surprised that it’s being met with some skepticism. That said, the idea that the Gates/Obama budget would somehow leave us “unprepared” for conventional war is just silly:
Others, like Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, cite the threats posed by nations around the world that remain true adversaries — or at least are competitors to American interests.
In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy center in Washington, Mr. Cornyn said that China was upgrading and expanding its navy to challenge American warships, that Russia was striving to intimidate its neighbors and re-establish a sphere of influence, and that North Korea and Iran continued to expand their missile arsenals while pursuing nuclear weapons.
Time again to take a look at US defense spending in context:
If we decided to take the threats Cornyn names seriously and spend double the combined budgets of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran then that would imply large cuts in our current levels of spending. And keep in mind that under such a scenario we’d still be able to call on allies such as South Korea, Japan, and our friends in NATO. The west would still have an overwhelming preponderance of military power.
It’s true, as Cornyn says, that we still face international security problems. But it’s not because we’re not spending enough on defense. It’s because we face problems we can’t solve with more defense spending.
Fiore! Gun Crazy
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Sully: Who Monitored The Torture?
The interrogation and torture of Abu Zubaydah was documented very carefully as it was pursued. The FBI claims it got a lot of valuable intelligence from him by legal methods in line with Western values and the rule of law. And Cheney yesterday seemed to confirm this:
We had captured these people. We had pursued interrogation in a normal way. We decided that we needed some enhanced techniques.Why? What had Zubaydah or KSM not said that Cheney wanted them to say? That's the key point, isn't it?
If your goal is finding out stuff you do not know, you ask questions. Leading questions, off-beat questions, irrelevant questions .. then very relevant ones. You have experts. You try all sorts of psychological strategies. You do what professional interrogators have always done, what the Brits did in Camp 020 in World War II, what Americans always did with captured spies.But if you think you already know something - such as, oh, I don't know, say that al Qaeda was working with Saddam to detonate WMDs in America - you have to force the captive to say exactly that. How do you force them? You torture them. And if you are convinced you know exactly what the victim is refusing to say and believe this information is vital and timely, you keep a very close eye on it all. In fact, you will want constant reports and updates and cables on the situation:
CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley with daily "torture" updates of Abu Zubaydah, the alleged "high-level" terrorist detainee, who was held at a secret "black site" prison and waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, according to newly released court documents obtained by this reporter. The extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and agency officials in Langley likely included updates provided to senior Bush administration officials.
And you might even want to watch a video or two before the CIA destroys the evidence. Did they? Who in the white House followed the torture of Zubaydah daily? And were they ever allowed to watch the waterboarding and beating?
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