“Little Boys Playing With Fire”: House GOP Just Making Stuff Up To Hide Its Own Impotence
In an interview on Fox News over the weekend, incoming House Majority Whip Steven Scalise of Lousiana was asked repeatedly by Chris Wallace about the prospect of impeaching President Barack Obama. The exchange was illuminating, both for the lack of illumination that Scalise was willing to offer, and for his sheer mendacity.
After Wallace pressed him on the impeachment issue, here’s how Scalise responded:
SCALISE: You know, this might be the first White House in history that’s trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president. Ultimately, what we want to do is see the president follow his own laws. But the president took an oath to faithfully execute the laws of this land and he’s not. In fact, the Supreme Court unanimously more than 12 times, unanimously said the president overreached and actually did things he doesn’t have the legal authority to do.
WALLACE: Again, on executive action to defer more deportations, what will the House do?
SCALISE: We’ve made it clear. We’re going to put options on the table to allow — to allow the House to take legal action against the president when he overreaches his authority. Others have already done that. Cases are going to the Supreme Court. Like I said, more than a dozen times the Supreme Court unanimously — I’m not talking about a 5-4 decision — 9-0, unanimously said the president overreached.
So, we’re going to continue to be a check and a balance against this administration.
WALLACE: But impeachment is off the table?
SCALISE: Well, the White House wants to talk about impeachment, and, ironically, they’re going out and trying to fundraise off that, too.
WALLACE: I’m asking you, sir.
SCALISE: Look, the White House will do anything they can to change the topic away from the president’s failed agenda — people paying higher costs for food, for health care, for gas at the pump. The president isn’t solving those problems. So, he wants to try to change the subject.
Some points to consider:
1) By my count, Wallace asked the impeachment question four times. Scalise evaded it four times. Yes, politicians evade questions all the time. Yes, Democrats are attempting to fundraise off the impeachment possibility. But Scalise could have pulled the rug from beneath that effort with a simple statement that the House would not consider impeachment. Despite repeated opportunities, he did not. He pointedly left the option on the table and tried to change the subject, ironically by accusing the president of trying to change the subject.
2) Scalise claimed that instead of impeachment, the topic should be what he called “the president’s failed agenda — people paying higher costs for food, for health care, for gas at the pump.” OK, let’s take a look at those issues.
—People are not paying higher costs for food, with a few notable exceptions such as pork and fresh produce. Those costs spikes are temporary, driven by widespread drought perhaps associated with climate change, as well as by a virus that killed millions of piglets last year. I’m not sure how Obama might have intervened with those problems. Maybe he should have issued an executive order banning piglet-killing viruses, but then again, the House would have added it to the list of impeachable offenses.
—Gasoline prices are dropping, not rising, falling nine cents a gallon in the last two weeks. They have recently been 9.5 cents below what they were a year ago. If the president is to be blamed when prices increase, I suppose Scalise is willing to give him credit when they fall. Or maybe not.
—Contrary to Scalise’s claims, health care inflation also remains at near-record-low levels.
3) In an effort to document the conservative narrative that Obama has become some sort of tyrant run amok, Scalise twice repeated the claim that “more than a dozen times the Supreme Court unanimously — I’m not talking about a 5-4 decision — 9-0, unanimously said the president overreached.”
That too is a complete fabrication, and Scalise knows it.
As Politifact documented a month ago, eight of the 13 Supreme Court cases referenced by Scalise were initiated by actions taken in the administration of President George W. Bush and were inherited under Obama. Factcheck.org also studied the claim; it too rejected it as false.
In addition, most of the 13 cases had nothing to do with presidential overreach. “For example, in United States v. Jones, the court was ruling on whether the FBI had the power to use a GPS to track a suspect and gather evidence,” Politifact points out. A second case involved a court ruling that “police could not search your cell phone without a warrant if you were arrested.” A third case involved a state law in Massachusetts that regulated protests outside abortion clinics. A fourth case — begun under Bush — involved tax law on overseas income. A fifth — also a Bush case — involved the statute of limitations in securities law.
In other words, the core piece of evidence behind the GOP’s narrative of executive overreach by Obama — evidence cited by Ted Cruz, by National Review, by the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and now by Scalise — is fraudulent. But those spreading it do not care. They have fed the base this “Obama-is-an unconstitutional-tyrant” line to keep it riled up, fearful and distracted, and it has worked. That is all they care about.
And if by creating this image of Obama as tyrannical threat to constitutional government, they create a groundswell for impeachment that they cannot control? Like little boys playing with fire, they don’t seem worried by that either.
By: Jay Bookman, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Published in The National Memo, July 31, 20114
“More Unhinged Than Usual”: Ted Cruz Sees An Imaginary ‘Economic Boycott Of Israel’
Just last week, a civilian airliner was shot down over a war zone, killing all 298 people on board. On Tuesday, just five days after the tragedy in Ukraine, a rocket landed Tuesday within a mile of Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
In the interest of public safety and fearing a “potentially hazardous security situation,” the Federal Aviation Administration announced a temporary halt to U.S. flights into the Israeli capital. “Safety is the very first priority for DOT, for FAA,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said yesterday. The announcement coincided with suspended flights from Air France and Lufthansa, along with a warning from the European Aviation Safety Agency, which “strongly” recommended against flights into Tel Aviv.
Here in the U.S., many on the right responded to the news with the kind of maturity and restraint we’ve come to expect: “FAA Trutherism” was born. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a move that was brazen even for him, accused the Obama administration of launching an “economic boycott on Israel.”
“When Secretary Kerry arrived in Cairo this week his first act was to announce $47 million in additional aid to Gaza, which is in effect $47 million for Hamas. In short order, this travel ban was announced by the FAA. Aiding Hamas while simultaneously isolating Israel does two things. One, it helps our enemy. Two, it hurts our ally.
“Until these serious questions are answered, the facts suggest that President Obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands. If so, Congress should demand answers.”
By any fair measure, Cruz’s response was more unhinged than his usual condemnations. The FAA’s security concerns, the far-right Texan said, are “punitive” and a possible attempt at “economic blackmail.” The senator raised the prospect of a presidential conspiracy, demanding information on “specific communications … between the FAA and the White House.”
Keep in mind, the Obama administration also asked Congress this week to “fast-track Israel’s request for an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome anti-missile system.” As Steve M. noted, the Obama administration and other Democrats “are seeking additional funding for Israel’s defense shield while Ted Cruz is alleging an economic boycott of Israel on Obama’s part.”
Cruz either hasn’t kept up on current events or he’s choosing not to see details that contradict his wild-eyed nonsense.
And the senator isn’t alone. Last night, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly told viewers the FAA was prohibiting domestic flights to Tel Aviv, but the FAA hadn’t imposed a similar policy over Ukraine. What Kelly claimed was wrong – the FAA has banned commercial travel over Ukraine since April.
This is what happens when the right gets a little too excited about bashing Obama – they lose sight of reality. The instinct to see presidential conspiracies lurking in every corner has passed the tipping point.
Let’s not brush past just how bizarre this whining really is. At its core, the complaint from Cruz and his allies is that the Obama administration is trying too hard to protect Americans traveling near war zones. If there were a deadly incident at the Tel Aviv airport involving a civilian U.S. passenger plane, it’s easy to imagine conservatives demanding to know why the FAA didn’t do more. This week, Republicans are instead complaining the FAA did too much.
This morning, however, Cruz received the news he wanted to hear: the FAA is now satisfied there are security measures in place and the travel ban is now over. The right can now move safely about the political landscape, looking for new “scandals” in need of conspiracy theories.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 24, 2014
“Stone-Engraved Sacrosanct Principles”: The Tea Party Isn’t A Political Movement, It’s A Religious One
America has long been the incubator of many spiritual creeds going back to the Great Awakening and even earlier. Only one of them, Mormonism, has taken root and flourished as a true religion sprung from our own native ground. Today, however, we have a new faith growing from this nation’s soil: the Tea Party. Despite its secular trappings and “taxed enough already” motto, it is a religious movement, one grounded in the traditions of American spiritual revival. This religiosity explains the Tea Party’s political zealotry.
The mark of a national political party in a democracy is its pluralistic quality, i.e. the ability to be inclusive enough to appeal to the broadest number of voters who may have differing interests on a variety of issues. While it may stand for certain basic principles, a party is often flexible in applying them, as are its representatives in fulfilling them. Despite the heated rhetoric of elections and the bombast of elected representatives, they generally seek consensus with the minority in order to achieve their legislative goals.
But when religion is thrown into the mix, all that is lost. Religion here doesn’t mean theology but a distinct belief system which, in totality, provides basic answers regarding how to live one’s life, how society should function, how to deal with social and political issues, what is right and wrong, who should lead us, and who should not. It does so in ways that fulfill deep-seated emotional needs that, at their profoundest level, are devotional. Given the confusions of a secular world being rapidly transformed by technology, demography, and globalization, this movement has assumed a spiritual aspect whose adepts have undergone a religious experience which, if not in name, then in virtually every other aspect, can be considered a faith.
Seen in this light, the behavior of Tea Party adherents makes sense. Their zeal is not the mercurial enthusiasm of a traditional Republican or Democrat that waxes and wanes with the party’s fortunes, much less the average voter who may not exercise the franchise at every election. These people are true believers who turn out faithfully at the primaries, giving them political clout in great excess to their actual numbers. Collectively, this can make it appear as if they are preponderant, enabling their tribunes to declare that they represent the will of the American people.
While a traditional political party may have a line that it won’t cross,the Tea Party has a stone-engraved set of principles, all of which are sacrosanct. This is not a political platform to be negotiated but a catechism with only a single answer. It is now a commonplace for Tea Party candidates to vow they won’t sacrifice an iota of their principles. In this light, shutting down the Government rather than bending on legislation becomes a moral imperative. While critics may decry such a tactic as “rule or ruin,” Tea Party brethren celebrate it, rather, as the act of a defiant Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple. For them, this is not demolition but reclamation, cleansing the sanctuary that has been profaned by liberals. They see themselves engaged in nothing less than a project of national salvation. The refusal to compromise is a watchword of their candidates who wear it as a badge of pride. This would seem disastrous in the give-and-take of politics but it is in keeping with sectarian religious doctrine. One doesn’t compromise on an article of faith.
This explains why the Tea Party faithful often appear to be so bellicose. You and I can have a reasonable disagreement about fiscal policy or foreign policy but if I attack your religious beliefs you will become understandably outraged. And if I challenge the credibility of your doctrine you will respond with righteous indignation. To question the validity of Moses parting the Red Sea or the Virgin Birth or Mohammed ascending to heaven on a flying horse is to confront the basis of a believer’s deepest values.
Consequently, on the issues of government, economics, race, and sex, the Tea Party promulgates a doctrine to which the faithful must subscribe. Democrats and independents who oppose their dogma are infidels. Republicans who don’t obey all the tenants are heretics, who are primaried rather than burned at the stake.
Like all revealed religions this one has its own Devil in the form of Barack Obama. This Antichrist in the White House is an illegitimate ruler who must be opposed at every turn, along with his lesser demons, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They are responsible for everything that has gone wrong with the country in the last six years and indeed, they represent a liberal legacy that has betrayed America’s ideals for the better part of a century. Washington is seen in the same way Protestant fire-breathers once saw Rome: a seat of corruption that has betrayed the pillars of the faith. The only way to save America’s sanctity is to take control of Washington and undermine the federal government while affecting to repair it. Critical to this endeavor is the drumroll of hell-fire sermons from the tub-thumpers of talk radio and Fox News. This national revival tent not only exhorts the faithful but its radio preachers have ultimately become the arbiters of doctrinal legitimacy, determining which candidates are worthy of their anointment and which lack purity.
Having created a picture of Hell, the Tea Party priesthood must furnish the faithful with an image of Paradise. This Eden is not located in space but in time: the Republic in the decades after the Civil War when the plantocracy ruled in the South and plutocrats reigned in the North. Blacks knew their place in Dixie through the beneficence of states’ rights, and the robber barons of the North had a cozy relationship with the government prior to the advent of labor laws, unions, and the income tax. Immigrants were not yet at high tide. It was still a white, male, Christian country and proudly so. When Tea Party stalwarts cry “Take back America!” we must ask from whom, and to what? They seek to take it back to the Gilded Age, and retrieve it from the lower orders: immigrants, minorities the “takers” of the “47 percent,” and their liberal enablers.
Most critical to any religious movement is a holy text, and the Right has appropriated nothing less than the Constitution to be its Bible. The Tea Party, its acolytes in Congress and its allies on the Supreme Court have allocated to themselves the sole interpretation of the Constitution with the ethos of “Originalism.” Legal minds look to the text to read the thoughts of the Framers as a high priest would study entrails at the Forum. The focus is on text rather than context and authors; the writing rather than the reality in which the words were written. This sort of thinking is a form of literalism that is kindred in spirit to the religious fundamentalism and literal, Biblical truth that rose as bulwarks against modernity.
One thing that Tea Partiers and liberals alike both recognize is that the Constitution forbids the establishment of religion. The prohibition was erected for good reason: to prevent the religious wars that wracked Europe in the previous century. The Enlightenment was to transcend such sectarian violence inimical to the social order together with the concomitant religious oppression that burdened individual conscience. By investing a political faction with a religious dimension the Tea Party presents a challenge to both religion and democracy.
By: Jack Schwartz, The Daily Beast, July 13, 2014
“The Rock Is Beckoning”: An Open Letter To Sarah Palin
Dear Ms. Palin:
I feel sorry for you. I truly do. It must be terribly frustrating to be so irrelevant. To have your rabble-rousing, race-baiting drivel limited to Fox’s Sean Hannity Show in your desperate, pathetic, never-ending quest for attention. You are, put simply, one of the most ignorant, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, hate-filled, polarizing individuals ever to hit the national political stage (thank you John McCain).
Your new video, in which you call for President Obama’s impeachment because of his “lawlessness,” is an unconscionable, unpatriotic piece of garbage. The level of disrespect, condescension, sarcasm and reality-butchering is astounding. To say that your fake-cutesy, sing-songy, snarky delivery is vomitous would be a colossal understatement. You’re also quite tone-deaf, comparing your suffering over his presidency to that of a “battered wife.” There really are no groups you won’t offend, are there?
Impeach Obama? For what, doing his job amid relentless Republican obstructionism and intransigence? For trying to keep government operating efficiently? For growing the economy? For creating millions of new jobs? For caring about 8-year-olds crossing the Mexican border alone? For wanting to find a practical, compassion solution to the immigration issue? For providing everyone health care? For trying to narrow the income inequality gap? For protecting women’s rights? For allowing people who love each other to marry?
That you, like that other heartless conservative Dick Cheney, even have a perch from which to still spew your venomous hate-speak, is unfortunate. No one, not even the Fox faithful, should be subjected to your incendiary bile. You’re a failed, disgraced politician who, despite becoming a humiliating punchline following the 2008 election, refuses to crawl back under your rock. Trust me: no one except Hannity, a few horny white Republican dudes and a smattering of their intellectually bankrupt women are interested in what you have to say.
Ssshhhh….hear that sound? It’s the rock beckoning….
By: Andy Ostroy, The Huffington Post Blog, July 10, 2014
“This Just Shouldn’t Be Possible”: Job Creation Trips Up GOP Message Machine
The more America’s job market improves, the tougher it is for Republicans to explain what’s happening. According to GOP talking points, tax hikes, regulations, and “Obamacare” are dragging down the economy, making it impossible for employers to create jobs.
And yet, the unemployment rate is at a six-year low, we’re on track for the best year for jobs since the Clinton era, and we just broke the record for the most consecutive months of private-sector job gains. For the right, this just shouldn’t be possible.
So how do Republicans reconcile the reality and their rhetoric? At least at Fox News, the answer is to ignore the inconvenient truths. Dylan Byers noted:
We won’t do the screen shots this time, but per usual FoxNews.com is the one major news site downplaying Thursday’s positive employment report. CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are all leading their sites with the news (in large fonts, no less). Fox News has it buried in fine print on a sidebar.
It’s hard to argue that such a decision is a matter of unbiased editorial judgment.
Ya think?
Given recent history – good news is ignored, bad news is trumpeted – it’s probably safe to assume the right’s not-so-subtle approach is intended to keep the bubble intact for conservative audiences.
But even funnier was House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) unintentionally hilarious statement in response to the new jobs report.
The headline clearly says the press released relates to the “June 2014 Unemployment Report,” but remarkably, the Speaker of the House managed to issue a statement that ignores the June 2014 Unemployment Report.
“The House has passed dozens of jobs bills that would mean more paychecks and more opportunities for middle-class families. But in order for us to make real progress, the president must do more than criticize. From trade to workplace flexibility, there’s no shortage of common ground where he can push his party’s leaders in the Senate to work with us. Until he provides that leadership, he is simply part of the problem. For our part, we will continue to listen to and address the concerns of Americans who are still asking ‘where are the jobs?’”
Look, it’s the day before a major national holiday. It’s quite possible that Boehner never even saw the job numbers and this statement was written days ago and released to the media by some poor intern stuck in a largely empty office.
But given the importance of jobs to the American public, is it really too much to ask that Boehner put a little effort into this? Let’s unpack the response to jobs data that managed to ignore jobs data:
* “The House has passed dozens of jobs bills.” Actually, it hasn’t. If you look at Boehner’s list of “jobs bills,” it’s primarily a bunch of bills written for and by the oil industry, encouraging drilling everywhere. Here’s the challenge for the Speaker’s office: put together a jobs bill, subject it to independent scrutiny, find out how many jobs it would create, and get back to us. We’ve been waiting for three years. It hasn’t happened.
* “[T]he president must do more than criticize.” Well, he has. Obama has sent real, independently scored bills that would create jobs. The House Republican majority has so far failed to even vote on them.
* “Until he provides that leadership, he is simply part of the problem.” Boehner is practically allergic to leadership, unable to convince his own far-right caucus to listen to him on most issues, making this a curious line of attack. Regardless, the president, unlike the hapless Speaker, has lowered unemployment and has presented real plans to expand on this progress. Can Boehner say the same?
* “For our part, we will continue to listen.” To whom? I can think of a whole lot of measures that Americans have urged Congress to pass, which Boehner has ignored entirely. Who exactly does the Speaker think he’s listening to?
* “[A]ddress the concerns of Americans who are still asking ‘where are the jobs?’” They’re right here. If the Speaker’s office looked at the jobs report before commenting on the jobs report, this would have been obvious.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 3, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 