This is like hiring a meteorologist who promises to give you the forecast you want
Add comment November 17th, 2009 12:45pm Pat Cunningham
Political critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are chortling over THIS.
Is it sexist to publish a mildly cheesecakey photo of Palin for which she willingly posed?
24 comments November 17th, 2009 12:01pm Pat Cunningham
Right-wing fans of Sarah Palin are in a major snit these days because Newsweek magazine dared to grace its cover (above) with a comely photo for which Palin willingly posed.
Is Newsweek guilty of sexism?
Steve M. doesn’t think so, as he explains HERE.
The real reason why GOPers oppose transfer of Gitmo detainees to Illinois
36 comments November 16th, 2009 01:16pm Pat Cunningham
(NOTE: This post has been updated yet again to reflect new developments, one of which includes a Rockford angle.)
As everyone knows by now, the Obama administration is considering the federal purchase of a vacant state prison (above) in rural northwestern Illinois to house about 100 suspected terrorists who have been held for years at a facility in Cuba that eventually will be shuttered for various geopolitical reasons.
The folks who live in Thomson, Ill., the site of the prison in question, generally seem to be in favor of the idea. So does Gov. Pat Quinn, who relishes the prospects of as many as 2,000 new jobs and the inflow of hundreds of millions of federal dollars.
But I’ve yet to hear of any prominent Republicans boosting the proposal. On the contrary, U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, whose district includes Thomson, is against it. And his fellow Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is circulating a letter of opposition among other GOP politicians.
The objections raised by Manzullo and Kirk, however, are nonsense.
Will the detainees attract hordes of terrorist sympathizers to tiny Thomson? That hasn’t happened in other U.S. locales where Islamic terrorists are imprisoned, including downstate Marion, Ill.
Might not the detainees escape? Nobody’s ever escaped from a federal supermax prison.
Won’t this plan make Illinois in general, and perhaps Chicago in particular, a likelier target for future terrorist attacks? No more likely, it would seem, than any of the other U.S. states or locales where Islamic terrorists currently are imprisoned.
Well, if these Nervous Nellie Republicans can’t come up with any logical arguments against the Thomson proposal, why do they refuse to go along with it? What’s the real reason for their opposition?
The answer is simple: They’re against it because it’s Barack Obama’s idea. To side with Obama on anything, especially if it relates to terrorism, is to invite the wrath of the wingnut base of the Republican Party.
UPDATE: Steve Benen is even HARDER than I on Manzullo and Kirk.
UPDATE II: Hold on! I stand corrected! There are, in fact, some prominent rightwingers who support the Thomson prison proposal.
In THIS NEWS STORY, three of them take a swipe at the poppycock peddled by the likes of Manzullo and Kirk.
”The scaremongering about these issues should stop,” the trio declare in a joint statement, noting that there is “absolutely no reason to fear that prisoners will escape or be released into their communities.”
UPDATE III: The letter from Mark Kirk to which I referred in the main body of this post suggests that federal trials of any detainees held in the Thomson prison might be held in Rockford.
The text of the letter is HERE.
So how come we don’t have any wacko militia groups in these parts? Or do we?
6 comments November 16th, 2009 12:18pm Pat Cunningham
Whenever I read of deliciously loony political uprisings in other parts of the country — book-burnings, anti-evolution campaigns against public schools, organized counterattacks in the so-called War on Christmas, the rise of vigililante groups, etc. — I usually rue the fact that we almost never get that kind of fun stuff here in Applesauceland.
Rockford used to a pretty nutty town. There was a time when chapters of the John Birch Society bloomed hereabouts like so many flowers in spring. Campaigns against water flouridation as a communist plot abounded. Subversion of one kind or another was suspected at every turn. The city was known far and wide as a citadel of right-wing extremism. We even had anti-integration campaigns when there weren’t enough black kids to fill more than a relative handful of seats in the public schools.
But we don’t get much of that crazy stuff anymore. Oh, sure, the comment threads here at Applesauce are often filled with the rantings of paranoiacs and latter-day brownshirts, but these folks are disorganized wannabes. Theirs isn’t a movement so much as a would-be chorus in which nobody can sing on key.
This absence of far-right political theater in these parts struck me again today when I read THIS STORY about how scores of new militia groups have formed across the country since the election of Barack Obama as president.
Of course, militia groups tend to thrive when there’s any Democrat in the White House, but apparently more so when the man in the Oval Office represents the dreaded Other. And Obama’s the whole package of Other. He’s not only black, but, to hear some people tell it, he’s also a foreign-born Muslim who hates America and hangs around with domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers.
Yeah, we have our share of Obamaphobes around here. But where’s our home-grown militia? Where are our guys who dress up in camouflage outfits and pretend to be Rambos who are prepared to smite the internal enemy at the first sound of the bugle call?
Either we don’t have such brave specimens among our menfolk, or they’re so cleverly secretive that they’ve formed a vast underground network of well-organized superpatriots without my having noticed.
No, no! I shouldn’t think such thoughts. That will only scare me, and that’s exactly what the militia guys want. Yes, I must remain vigilant — but never fearful.
On the other hand, they probably know that I’m not armed. Jeez, what should I do? No wonder some of my Applesauce commenters have asked where I reside. They’re after me, I tell you. They think that I, too, am the Other.
This guy charts path for Palin to win GOP nomination in 2012
2 comments November 16th, 2009 10:31am Pat Cunningham
Democrats should read THIS PIECE carefully and then fervently pray that the scenario envisioned therein actually happens.
Of course, by the same token, the dwindling ranks of Republicans who can walk upright and read stop signs without moving their lips should strive to make sure it doesnt happen, lest their party wander so deep into the wildnerness that it won’t find its way out for a generation or two.
An excerpt:
If Palin launches a 2012 race – and survives the South Carolina primary with her aura intact – she could theoretically sweep the winner-take-all states without ever winning a majority anywhere. The Republican establishment (the congressional leadership, the governors, the major donors and national consultants) could all agree that Palin would be an electoral disaster against Obama in November and still be powerless to halt her juggernaut.
The best way to stop Sarah would be for GOP insiders to rally quickly around a single anti-Palin candidate. But such cabals rarely work in politics because there are too many egos involved. Would, say, Romney be so panicked about Palin that he would prematurely abandon his presidential ambitions to support a potentially more winnable candidate like maybe Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? Not bloody likely. For that matter, would populist Huckabee drop out in favor of a big-business Republican like Romney to prevent Palin mania? Yeah, sure.
Although the party rules are entirely different than in 1964 when Goldwater permanently decimated the Eastern liberal Republican Party, the guiding principle is the same. A well-known candidate with a passionate following who organizes early can win the nomination even if a large swath of the party believes that he or she is ill-equipped to be entrusted with the nation’s nuclear codes.
Lawmakers whose votes defy wishes of their constituents rarely are punished at polls
2 comments November 16th, 2009 09:47am Pat Cunningham
As Andrew Gelman POINTS OUT, the power of incumbency is such for members of Congress that most of them can pretty much vote as they please on legislative issues without worrying about getting thrown out of office on election day.
An excerpt:
Incumbent congressmembers almost always win reelection. And, when they don’t, they’re often losing as part of a national swing (as in the 1994 Republican sweep or the 2006/2008 Democratic shift). And when an incumbent does lose unexpectedly, it can be for something unrelated to their votes (remember the “check kiting scandal” of 1992?).
The tragedy of government skepticism about PTSD among veterans
Add comment November 16th, 2009 08:57am Pat Cunningham
I have no immediate comment about THIS. Maybe you do.
Right-wing rhetoric on Ft. Hood and Afghanistan is foolishly contradictory
Add comment November 15th, 2009 10:31am Pat Cunningham
Frank Rich NAILS IT.
An excerpt:
As their Fort Hood rhetoric made clear, McChrystal’s most vehement partisans don’t trust American Muslims, let alone those of the Taliban, no matter how earnestly the general may argue that they can be won over by our troops’ friendliness (or bribes). If, as the right has it, our Army cannot be trusted to recognize a Hasan in its own ranks, then how will it figure out who the “good” Muslims will be as we try to build a “stable” state (whatever “stable” means) in a country that has never had a functioning central government? If our troops can’t be protected from seemingly friendly Muslim American brethren in Killeen, Tex., what are the odds of survival for the 40,000 more troops the hawks want to deploy to Kabul and sinkholes beyond?
About the only prominent voice among the liberal-bashing, Obama-loathing right who has noted this gaping contradiction is Mark Steyn of National Review. “Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet” were “gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously,” he wrote. “And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.” You have to applaud Steyn’s rare intellectual consistency within his camp. One imagines that he does not buy the notion that our Army, however brilliant, has a shot at building “strong personal relationships” with a population that often regards us as occupiers and infidels.
Libertarian Web site begs for tax-deductible contributions
2 comments November 15th, 2009 09:18am Pat Cunningham
The hypocrisy HERE is truly funny. (Warning: There’s one mild vulgarism in this piece.)
Author of so-called death-panels provision tells all
7 comments November 15th, 2009 08:24am Pat Cunningham
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, EXPLAINS how an eminently sensible provision he wrote into health-care-reform legislation became a huge political bugaboo.
An excerpt:
The House Ways and Means Committee “mark-up session” of the health care bill, on July 16, lasted all day and into the night. Republican colleagues offered dozens of amendments aimed at numerous provisions. Nowhere was there a single proposal to change the end-of-life language, nor a word spoken in opposition. Not a single word.
Then Betsy McCaughey entered the fray. A former lieutenant governor of New York, Ms. McCaughey had gained notoriety in the 1990s by attacking the Clinton health plan. In a radio interview, she attacked the end-of-life provisions in the health care legislation, claiming it “would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.” The St. Petersburg Times’s fact-checking Web site PolitiFact quickly excoriated her: “McCaughey isn’t just wrong; she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood.”
But in today’s vicious news cycle, lies take on lives of their own on Web sites, blogs and e-mail chains and go viral in seconds. Ms. McCaughey’s claims were soon widely circulated in the thirst for ammunition against the Democrats’ health care reform plan. “Mandatory counseling for all seniors at a minimum of every five years, more often if the seasoned citizen is sick or in a nursing home,” was how Rush Limbaugh described the provision a week later. “We can’t have counseling for mothers who are thinking of terminating their pregnancy, but we can go in there and counsel people about to die,” he added.
