Peter King: Boehner Resignation = "the Crazies Have Taken Over the GOP"

New York Republican Peter King is not what most would consider a moderate, but in today's utterly insane Republican Party, King actually looks more and more sane in relative terms.  With John Boehner's sudden announcement that he will resign as Speaker of the House and from Congress entirely by the end of October, King has lamented that it is clear that "the crazies" have taken over the GOP.  While I have never liked Boehner - who I see as a largely spineless man - his main role has been to try to rein in the utterly insane in the House GOP.  With him gone, what type of utter lunatic will the swamp fever ridden Christofascit/Tea Party controlled political whores try to put in Boehner's place.  Here are highlights from Politico:

House Speaker John Boehner's sudden resignation Friday "signals that the crazies have taken over the party," New York Republican Peter King said Friday.

“I think it signals the crazies have taken over the party, taken over to the party that you can remove a speaker of the House who’s second in line to be president, a constitutional officer in the middle of his term with no allegations of impropriety, a person who’s honest and doing his job. This has never happened before in our country," King said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Friday afternoon. "He could have stayed on.”

“There was actually, I thought, like a hush in the room for a few seconds where no one — people like looked at each other — they couldn’t believe it. And then he read the prayer of St. Francis, which was very moving," King said of the moment when Boehner told fellow lawmakers that he was leaving office. 

"I’m not a psychologist but I think John probably pretty much decided that the more he did, the more friction would be caused, and that he probably thought it was best for him to leave soon anyway, which I think is wrong," he said. "But having the pope here yesterday just sort of put John in the frame of mind [that] it’s time to leave."

Boehner's decision to resign is "like throwing raw meat" to more extreme factions of the caucus who are trying to "hijack and blackmail the party," King said. "They’re not going to see it as a gesture of peace, they’re going to just look for more."

“I think whoever runs for speaker should make it clear that he’s not going to give in to these people. We’re not going to appease them," he concluded. "The time for appeasement is over.”

GOP Insanity - Ben Carson vs. Evolution

If one wants to see just how low the Republican Party has fallen, look no farther than presidential nominee candidate Ben Carson.  The once renown neurosurgeon - who some him knew him in the past have shared that they wonder if the man has had a nervous breakdown or what some other mental breakdown -  has stated that Darwin was in league with Satan when he developed the theory of evolution.  And video tape documents Carson's lunatic statements, so denial will be difficult.  At est, he can claim he did not mean what he said and was merely prostituting himself to Christofascist.  The take away? Do we really want a man who (i) is an opportunistic liar, or (ii) seemingly suffers from mental illness and/or out right insanity in the White House?  Little Green Footballs looks at Carson's troubling batshitery.  Here are highlights:

At LGF we’ve written several times about GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s rejection of the scientific theory of evolution in favor of young Earth creationism. But here’s a video that graphically demonstrates just how regressive Carson’s anti-science beliefs are.

In this speech delivered to the Adventist News Network’s “Celebration of Creation” in November 2011, Carson shows ignorance of basic geology, attributes fake quotes to “evolutionists,” ridicules scientists, and last but not least, says Charles Darwin was influenced to come up with the theory of evolution by none other than… yes, Satan. The Horned One. His Nibs. In Carson’s words, “the Adversary.”

It’s shocking and disturbing that one of the frontrunners in the GOP campaign for president holds these kinds of Dark Ages anti-science beliefs. But while Carson’s statements may seem extreme, nearly all of the GOP candidates in this race are creationists.

In addition to everything else that’s wrong with them in 2015 (and that’s plenty), the Republicans are the party of hard core science denial.

Some quotes from the video, transcribed by Daniel W. VanArsdale:

[20:56] “… there is abundant evidence, geological evidence, that there was a worldwide flood. Go up into the Andes Mountains and see all those fossils on the top of those mountains.

[24:34] “So we should be able to find intermediate species at any given point in time, and we should be able to find how they line up. You know Darwin said his whole theory depended on the fossil remains and he said we should be able to line up from a single cell organism to man several miles long and just walk right down the fossil trail and see how everything evolved. And he said the only reason they didn’t have the fossils was because they were not geologically sophisticated enough, but that we would be in fifty to a hundred years. Well that was a hundred and fifty years ago. We still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where are the fossil remains?

[31:03]. “Well, now what about the big bang theory? I find the big bang really quite fascinating. Now here you have all these highfaluting scientists, and they are saying there was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. [31:19] … [32:16] Well, but I mean it’s even more ridiculous than that, because our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming. Now that type of organization, to just come out of an explosion? … [32:43] And then even if you want to use their own scientific theories, you know you’ve got this mass spinning and then it explodes. In physics we have something we call angular momentum and it is preserved, so it should be preserved in any orbit of anything that is effected by gravity around a planet, which means everything has to traverse in the same direction. Well it doesn’t! There are many planets that have satellites and moons that go in the opposite directions. So that doesn’t work with angular momentum.” [33:19]

[36:49] “How are flowers able to reproduce? Pollination. How does pollination occur? Bees and other creatures. Now according to evolution, plants came along before the bees. So how did the plants reproduce? … [37:41] … according to evolutionary model, you know we really came from an ameba. And amebas, they just like split and then there’s two amebas. So it seems to me like according to evolutionary model you do things that are efficient. So rather than going out and looking for a mate you would just divide, and then there would be two of you. … [38:16] But, you know, things are supposed to work in an efficient way, so according to the evolutionary model we would be less pugilistic, we would be much more logical, we would be much more creative, we wouldn’t be going around fighting each other and cutting off people’s heads anymore. Because that stuff would be extinguished and we would have evolved into something much better. According to the creation model, in which we have an adversary, it’s very easy to explain why people act that way, it’s because they have choice and because there is an adversary out there. [38:57]

[answering a woman’s question, 45:07] “I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary [Satan], and it has become what is scientifically politically correct. Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they are afraid to say anything.”

As I have said before, I increasingly view conservative/fundamentalist religious belief as demonstrative of serious emotional and mental illness.  If that is the case, then all of the GOP candidates belong under psychiatric care.

Rick Perry Abandons Presidential Run

The GOP clown car - or perhaps we should say bus - has one less occupant.  Rick Perry, who I have always seen as dangerous and delusional has called it quits.   Apparently, outside of Texas, few want was Perry was trying to sell and he has grasp that reality even if on almost every other issue he is out of touch with objective reality. Now we just need to dump the remaining clown car occupants.   Politico looks at Perry's demise.  Here are highlights:  

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday announced that he was suspending his presidential campaign, becoming the first Republican to drop out of the race and kicking off the winnowing stage of the crowded GOP contest.

"We have a tremendous field—the best in a generation—so I step aside knowing our party is in good hands," Perry said at a conservative conference in St. Louis.

The longest-serving governor in Texas history, Perry had never lost a race in his home state in his three-decades-long career, making his stumbles in the national spotlight this year, and during his ill-fated 2012 bid, all the more humbling. 

As a titan in the Texas political arena, Perry entered the 2012 GOP primary as the frontrunner, only to watch his campaign implode amid a series of high-profile missteps. In an attempt at political redemption, the former governor spent close to two years traveling and studying up on policy issues in the run-up to 2016, seeking to rehabilitate his tarnished image. But the spectacular nature of his 2012 collapse proved difficult to overcome and he struggled to remain relevant. Fundraising was a challenge, and he failed to gain traction in the polls despite spending significant time in the early states, especially Iowa, and despite the assistance of a well-funded super PAC.

Perry began alerting donors and supporters as early as Thursday that he was planning to drop out, said Doug Deason, son of Texas billionaire Darwin Deason, who gave $5 million to Perry's super PAC. The Deasons received a call from Perry on Thursday alerting them to his move, and they plan to watch the field play out further before committing.

By this week, he was down to one paid staffer in Iowa, one in South Carolina and none in New Hampshire. He was foundering in the polls after failing to qualify for the main stage debate in the first GOP primary contest and his weak polling support had once again relegated him to the second-tier debate next week.

My view?  Good riddance! I have long though Perry a dangerous buffoon.

Is Sarah Palin Gearing Up for a 2016 Race or Just a Narcissistic Lunatic?

Just when you think the Republican Party cannot possibly get any insane and detached from objective reality, rumors start that Sarah Palin - queen of the crazies - is headed to Iowa to test the waters for a 2016 presidential run.  Personally, I suspect that what's really going on is that Palin - a narcissist of the highest order - merely wants to keep her name in the news and try to keep a base willing to pay to hear her demented screeds.  The woman is shameless and the personification of white trash to use my New Orleans belle maternal grandmother's term for people like Palin.   CNN looks at Palins plans to be in Iowa as well as the other certifiable loons potential GOP candidates.  Here are excerpts:

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential pick, is headed to Iowa next month for a conservative gathering that will showcase no fewer than nine potential 2016 presidential contenders.

She's one of the confirmed speakers at the inaugural Iowa Freedom Summit, an event organized by Iowa Rep. Steve King and conservative group Citizens United to "bring grassroots activists from across Iowa to hear directly from national conservative leaders," per its website. The event is scheduled for Jan. 24.

Palin raised eyebrows last Spring when she said she'd "never say never" to a 2016 presidential run, and remains a star within the conservative wing of the GOP, but there's little indication she's moving forward with preparations for a bid.

If she ran, she'd face stiff competition for conservative support from a wide array of Republicans, many of whom will join her at the Iowa Freedom Summit.

Confirmed speakers for the event include Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, physician Ben Carson, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Republican National Committee fundraiser Carly Fiorina — all of whom are openly contemplating a presidential run or haven't ruled it out.

The event will give the potential contenders the opportunity to test the waters with Iowa grassroots Republicans, which are key to any conservative presidential contender's chances. A strong showing in the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the presidential primary, signals to major donors and conservatives in other states that a candidate is a viable option for the nomination.

One would almost think the event was a contest to see who is the craziest favorite of the Christofascist, ignorance embracing element of the GOP.  To use the word "conservative" to describe the nutcase wing of the GOP shows how afraid the mainstream media is to call these lunatics out for what they really are.  The belong in an asylum, not holding political office.

Republicans Finally Admit There Is No Benghazi Scandal

One has to wonder what the reality free members of the GOP base will do now that Republicans have finally admitted that there was no Benghazi scandal after a two year endless search for a grand conspiracy.  But at last tThe House Select Intelligence Committee—controlled by Republicans—has finally released its report that concludes that there was no conspiracy or scandal - after, of course, the midterm elections have safely pasted.  Will the report sway the irrational elements of the GOP base?  Probably not.  After all, these folks still haven't accepted the reality that Barack Obama was born in America.  Mother Jones looks at the release of the House Committee report.  Here are excerpts:

For two years, . . .  Republicans have been on an endless search for a grand conspiracy theory that explains how it [the Benghazi attacks] all happened. Intelligence was ignored because it would have been inconvenient to the White House to acknowledge it. Hillary Clinton's State Department bungled the response to the initial protests in Cairo. Both State and CIA bungled the military response to the attacks themselves. Even so, rescue was still possible, but it was derailed by a stand down order—possibly from President Obama himself. The talking points after the attack were deliberately twisted for political reasons. Dissenters who tried to tell us what really happened were harshly punished.

Is any of this true? The House Select Intelligence Committee—controlled by Republicans—has been investigating the Benghazi attacks in minute detail for two years. Today, with the midterm elections safely past, they issued their findings. Their exoneration of the White House was sweeping and nearly absolute. So sweeping that I want to quote directly from the report's summary, rather than paraphrasing it. Here it is:

• The Committee first concludes that the CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi....Appropriate U.S. personnel made reasonable tactical decisions that night, and the Committee found no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support....
   
• Second, the Committee finds that there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks. In the months prior, the IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat environment in Benghazi, but the IC did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks.
   
• Third, the Committee finds that a mixed group of individuals, including those affiliated with Al Qa'ida, participated in the attacks....
   
• Finally, the Committee found no evidence that any officer was intimidated, wrongly forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement or otherwise kept from speaking to Congress, or polygraphed because of their presence in Benghazi. The Committee also found no evidence that the CIA conducted unauthorized activities in Benghazi and no evidence that the IC shipped arms to Syria.

It's hard to exaggerate just how remarkable this document is. It's not that the committee found nothing to criticize. They did. The State Department facility in Benghazi had inadequate security. Some of the early intelligence after the attacks was inaccurate. The CIA should have given more weight to eyewitnesses on the ground.

But those are routine after-action critiques, ones that were fully acknowledged by the very first investigations. Beyond that, every single conspiracy theory—without exception—was conclusively debunked.

Late on a Friday afternoon, when it would get the least attention, a Republican-led committee finally admitted that every single Benghazi conspiracy theory was false. There are ways that the response to the attacks could have been improved, but that's it. Nobody at the White House interfered. Nobody lied. Nobody prevented the truth from being told.

It was all just manufactured outrage from the beginning. But now the air is gone. There is no scandal, and there never was.

Why does the cynic in me now suspect that the GOP base will claim that the GOP controlled report was the result of a conspiracy?  

Lunatic Ken Cuccinelli Blames 2013 Loss on "Scam Pac"

Proving that he is becoming even more detached from objective reality, failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli has filed a lawsuit against a conservative political action committee ("PAC") claiming that the Pac, Conservative StrikeForce PAC, misled would be donors and hurt Kookinelli's ability to fund raise.   Cuccinelli refuses to accept the fact that his own extremism and efforts to push a theocratic social agenda while attorney general is what caused his loss.  The man truly belongs in a mental ward (he also needs to come out of the closet so that he can get past his self-loathing and internalized homophobia that may be the source of much of his lunacy).  Here are excerpts from a Washington Post on this latest batshitery from Kookinelli:

Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (R) is accusing a conservative group of misleading supporters of his 2013 gubernatorial campaign through a “malicious ‘Scam PAC’ operation.” 

Cuccinelli alleges that $10,000 of “approximately $2.2 million” raised by the PAC was donated to the campaign. Nor did the group follow through on promises of independent expenditures to support Cuccinelli with get-out-the-vote efforts, direct mail, phone banks, radio ads, canvassing and other election work, the suit says.

An attorney for the defendants, Mark Braden, said he and his clients were “mystified” by the lawsuit. “This is the classic definition of no good deed goes unpunished,” Braden said.

Cuccinelli’s fundraising lagged throughout the 2013 race. McAuliffe — a top Democratic Party fundraiser before he was a candidate — raised more than $38 million. Cuccinelli — hobbled by party infighting and concern among business-oriented Republicans that he was too focused on social issues — raised $21 million. 

Cuccinelli accuses the defendants of false advertising, breach of contract and unauthorized use of his name and image.  

Larry Noble, former general counsel for the FEC and now at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, said he has long seen PACs “that have been set up to basically support the people that are running it.”
He said that as long as the activity is accurately reported and the money raised was not earmarked for a campaign, there’s no FEC requirement to spend the money on politics. 

One can only hope that through this lawsuit Cuccinelli makes it even more impossible for him to ever run for political office in the future.

GOP Star Witnesses Debunk Right-Wing Benghazi Conspiracy Theories

The right wing has been salivating over supposed bombshells that would damage Barack Obama - who they despise because of his race - and Hillary Clinton in connecting with the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  And yesterday, they hoped to set the bombshell off, precept it didn't happen.  Their star witness debunked their wild conspiracy theories.  Yes, Benghazi could have been handled better, but the freepers are so over wrought with their hatred of Obama that objective reality never seems to factor into their fantasies.  Think Progress looks at the let down for the far right.  Here are excerpts:

The “whistleblowers” at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on what really happened in Benghazi, Libya last September were supposed to break the dam that would lead to President Obama’s eventual downfall, in the eyes of conservatives. Instead, these witness actually served to debunk several theories that the right-wing has pushed on Benghazi, leaving the hearing a fizzle for the GOP:

1. F-16s could have been sent to Benghazi

Part of the prevailing theory surrounding the events the night of the Benghazi attacks is that the Obama administration did not do enough militarily to respond to the crisis. Gregory Hicks — a Foreign Service Officer and the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — claimed during his pre-hearing testimony that fighter jets could have been flown over Benghazi, preventing the second wave of the attack from occurring. 

Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) questioned that statement, asking Hicks whether he disagreed with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey’s assessment that no air assets were in range the night of the attack. Hicks didn’t disagree, saying he was “speaking from [his] perspective” and what “veteran Libyan revolutionaries” told him, rather than Pentagon assessments.

2. Hillary Clinton signed cables denying additional security to Benghazi

House Republicans came to the conclusion in their interim report on Benghazi that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to them about what she knew and when during her testimony this January. This includes her statement that at no time was she aware of requests for additional security at the diplomatic facility in Benghazi prior to the attack. 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) used her time to take issue with this claim, asking all three witnesses about standard protocol for cables leaving the State Department. All three agreed with Maloney, that the Secretary of State’s name is placed at the bottom of all outgoing cables and telegrams from Foggy Bottom, whether the Secretary has viewed them or not, shooting down the GOP claim.

3. A Special Forces Team that could have saved lives was told to stand down

One of the most shocking reveals in the lead-up to today’s hearing was that a team of Special Forces in Tripoli were told not to deploy to Benghazi during the attack. That decision has led to an uproar on the right, including claims of dereliction of duty towards Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey for not taking actions that could have saved lives. 

During questioning, Hicks confirmed that the team was ready to be deployed — not to join the fighting at the CIA annex — but “to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack.” Hicks also confirmed that it was the second such team to be readied for deployment, with the first having proceeded to Benghazi earlier. Despite the second team not deploying, the staff was all evacuated first to Tripoli, then to Germany, within 18 hours of the attack taking place.

4. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board isn’t legitimate

Republicans have been attacking the State Department’s official in-house review of the shortcomings seen before, during, and after the assault in Benghazi. That criticism prompted House Republicans to write their own report. When asked point blank about the recommendations of the Board, however, the witnesses didn’t cooperate with the GOP narrative. “Absolutely,” Eric Nordstrom, the Regional Security Officer for Libya prior to the assault in Benghazi, answered when asked if he believes implementing the recommendations would improve security. “I had an opportunity to review that along with other two committee reports. I think taken altogether, they’re fairly comprehensive and reasonable.” Hicks, when questioned, said that while he had some issues with the process by which the Board gathered its information, he demurred on criticizing the report itself.

 Reality means nothing to the far right and their political prostitutes in the GOP.  Hence, be assured the conspiracy theories will remain alive and well in freeper land.  Remember, these folks still insist that Obama wasn't born in America.

Karl Rove's War on the GOP's Lunatic Base

Make no mistake.  I loath Karl Rove, not the least because he used anti-gay marriage hysteria to turn out the haters in 2004 to secure the reelection of George W. Bush and the horrible Dick Cheney.  But I do have to admit that I am savoring Rove's new declared war on the very lunatics that he helped empower nearly a decade ago out of what was short term expediency with no thought to the long term effects of rallying the Christofascists and allowing them to take over the GOP.  Rove helped crerate the GOP's Frankenstein Monster and now he is trying to kill it.  It will make for entertaining spectator sport.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the Rove's effort to use the equivalent of radiation and chemo therapy to rid the GOP of the cancer he helped metastasize.  Here are some column highlights:

What in the hell was Karl Rove thinking? This has been the question on the minds of many political observers since the Republican super-strategist opened up a nasty new front in the ongoing civil war between his party’s purists and its pragmatists.

The storm broke February 6, when Rove, via the front page of The New York Times, debuted his newest venture, the Conservative Victory Project: an aggressive battle plan for the midterms that involves his super PAC, American Crossroads, intervening in the GOP primaries to try to ensure that the strongest, most electable candidates—not necessarily the most ideologically pristine ones—prevail.

The plan itself seems sound. The widespread sense among Republicans is that the party blew an opportunity to retake the Senate last year as a result of several not-ready-for-primetime candidates—Todd “legitimate rape” Akin being the most notable—winning primaries.

Unsurprisingly, however, the purist wing takes exception to all the finger pointing in its direction. And following the unveiling of Rove’s project, it went ballistic. Tea Party types, as well as conservative radio hosts like Mark Levin and Steve Deace, lined up to take their swings at Rove for plotting to marginalize conservatives and, as a seriously miffed Deace told me, “rubbing our noses in it publicly.” In The New York fricking Times, no less! “There will be no fixing this,” asserted Deace. “The civil war has been brewing in this party” for a couple of years now, he said, and people are operating with “short fuses.” “What Karl is providing is a face to our frustration.”

As the Karl-versus-conservatives story line took hold, Rove launched a Fox News apology tour, hopping from show to show, explaining to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Chris Wallace how his plan had been misconstrued, how he had nothing against hard-core conservatives

Many Republicans, meanwhile, clucked their tongues and marveled at why Rove had chosen to kick the hornet’s nest. As some strategists noted (mostly sotto voce), there are things in politics that you sometimes have to do but that you simply do not talk about. Mucking around in primaries is one of those things. Don’t announce it, just do it—and for God’s sake tread lightly, taking great care to work with local leaders and play nice with everyone.  .  .  .  .  By so indelicately trumpeting his plans, Rove seemed to violate this basic precept. With just a bit more tact, political watchers note, he could have avoided this whole nasty fight.

But what if, for Rove, the fight was key to the strategy?  Arguably no Republican had a deeper post-election hole to climb out of than Rove. His personal brand was badly damaged by his triumphal forecasts last cycle, including an embarrassing election night that found him on Fox News disputing the network’s decision to call the race for President Obama. More materially, American Crossroads and its sister organization, Crossroads GPS, failed to deliver. Big time.

Post-election, big Republican donors have been demanding answers as a condition of future support for various groups—and players in the money game report that there has been barking, profanity, and not-so-veiled threats.  .  .  .  .  .    Rove’s donors were no exception to this trend, meaning he needed to do something to unruffle their feathers. Fast. “This is all about the donors,” says another veteran strategist. And what better way to make a statement to donors than to formulate a brand-new strategy and splash it across the front page of the paper of record? Message: lessons learned. Course correction set.

As for the backlash among purists, some political watchers assume this too is all part of the larger plan. How better to reassure anxious donors that their distaste for Akin-like candidates is shared than to poke a stick in the eye of the party’s anti-establishment forces—and, for good measure, to do so in the newspaper that symbolizes all that hard-core conservatives despise?
 

Deace and his team have, in fact, vowed to make Rove pay for his insults. “Anybody that he supports is toast,” says Deace. “Anybody Rove is attached to will get a scarlet letter. At this point a candidate would be better off getting Barack Obama’s endorsement than Karl Rove’s.”   Already the Iowa Senate race is shaping up to be an early test of this grudge match.

Of course, Rove isn’t the only one poised to benefit from this spectacle. Even as he pokes purists in an apparent effort to jumpstart his 2014 money machine, the purists are looking to fill their coffers by poking back. “They need their shiny ball strategy too,” observes the veteran strategist. “Everybody is trying to raise money.” And just like Rove, these groups play rough—at times a little too rough. Last week the Tea Party Patriots had to issue an apology for a help-us-fight-Karl-Rove fundraising plea that included a Photoshopped image of their target dressed as an SS officer.

You know it’s been a rough run when members of your own party start comparing you with Nazis. But don’t feel too sorry for Karl—or for those at war with him. As long as the dollars keep flowing in, both sides can walk away from this skirmish feeling like winners.

I hope this all turns into a blood sport with both sides seriously wounding each other.

Federal Judge: Crackpots and Lunatics in the GOP Have Made Me Less Conservative

Judge Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired conservative jurists.  But like many others, he finds that the sickness - an almost mental illness that combines religious extremism, greed and a total lack of compassion for others, and a refusal to deal with objective reality - that predominates in today's Republican Party is driving him away from conservatism. As a former Republican and party activist, I fully relate to Posner's disgust with what the GOP has become and how it has truly made the label "conservative" into something ugly.  Frankly, I don't see things getting any better as Mitt Romney continues to prostitute himself to the nastiest elements in the GOP.  NPR has a piece on Judge Posner's retreat from conservatism.  I particularly enjoy his use of the terms "crackpots" and "lunatics."   Here are excerpts:

Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result.

Posner expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan and the economist Milton Friedman, two pillars of conservatism. But over the past 10 years, Posner said, "there's been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking."
"I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said.

Posner, who was appointed to the appeals court by Reagan, speculated that the leaks about the deliberations over the national health care law — which are apparently designed to discredit Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion upholding the law — would backfire. "I think these right-wingers who are blasting Roberts are making a very serious mistake," he said.

"Because if you put [yourself] in his position ... what's he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position."

As NPR notes, in addition to serving as a federal appeals court judge, Posner is the author of several  dozen books on subjects ranging from law and economics to aging and literature.  I don't blame him whatsoever for wanting to distance himself from today's "conservatives."

Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli's Growing Legal Losing Streak

As regular readers already appreciate, I view Virginia Attorney General Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli to be a dangerous, delusional menace to the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Worse yet, he's a religious extremist.  And if one is an LGBT Virginian, the man should send shivers down you spine and scare the living day lights out of you because this man wants to be Governor of Virginia.  Kookinelli would make Bob "Taliban Bob" "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell look like a flaming liberal.  Yet Kookinelli's record as Virginia's top attorney has been one of a growing list of legal debacles where he has filed lawsuits based on lunatic far right ideology only to go down in flames every time.  Thursday's health care ruling but the U. S. Supreme Court is yet the latest example of Kookinelli being flat ass wrong on his legal analysis.  Based on Kookinelli's continually flawed legal skills, he should not be attorney general much less governor.  A piece in the Washington Post examines Cuccinelli's trail of failed lawsuits. Here are excerpts:

When it comes to high-profile legal cases, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II reminds me of Teddy  .   .  .  .   the oversized, foam-headed Teddy mascot who “competes” against other presidents in fourth-inning footraces at Nationals Park.  Teddy, famously, has never won. With two new, major court defeats last week, Cuccinelli’s record is almost as woeful. 

With these latest reverses, it’s clear that Cuccinelli’s legal crusades serve primarily to win him right-wing acclaim and not to actually roll back the allegedly tyrannical liberal legislation he decries.

The ambitious Virginia conservative, who’s running for governor, lost big on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health-care reform act. Cuccinelli (R) had become a nationally known tea party champion by rushing in 2010 to be the first state attorney general to file suit against the law, acting just minutes after the president signed it. 

He suffered another setback on Tuesday when a federal appeals court in the District slapped down a legal case against the Environmental Protection Agency.

[Cuccinelli's]  he’s had a remarkable number of losses on closely watched cases [suits against UVA on climate change and a lawsuit against Mellon Bank] .   .  .  .  .  The twin defeats last week, however, were landmarks. For Cuccinelli and other conservative legal activists, health care and climate change have been marquee issues in which they sought to portray the Obama administration as trampling on the Constitution and threatening American liberties.  Now they’ve had their day in court – and lost. 

The reverses feel particularly dramatic because the tea party’s rhetoric about the stakes has been so apocalyptic. In his initial response to the health-care ruling, Cuccinelli called it “a dark day for the American people, the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Consider the extremity of that statement. A Supreme Court decision written by a conservative chief justice supposedly threatened “the rule of law” just because it upheld a moderately liberal social program that Cuccinelli viewed as unjustified.  

“It’s a nice spin, but a loss is a loss,” said Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond. 

The setback in the EPA case was even more resounding. Cuccinelli argued that the EPA was wrong to rely on outside scientists to help it conclude that human activity is leading to global warming.

The court mocked that contention.

So far, regardless of the legal outcomes, Cuccinelli’s courtroom drives have worked for him politically. He’s the darling of the Virginia Republican conservative base.  .   .   .   .    At some point, though, symbolism alone will not be enough. It may work at the ballpark for Teddy, who’s celebrated as lovable. But for a politician, in the long run, voters aren’t going to respect a loser. 

What is truly disconcerting is the amount of state resources Cuccinelli has squandered in pursuing frivolous lawsuits which do not sxcite anyone outside of the Kool-Aid drinking, Bible beating GOP base.  Meanwhile, legitimate issues go unaddressed.  Cuccinelli has in effect been using state funds to run a de facto GOP primary campaign.  He ought to have to reimburse Virginia for these squandered resources.

Reality Denying Michele Bachmann Disputes Kinsey Report

Lunatic GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann just can't seem to keep her mouth shout and avoid babbling anti-gay batshitery. Of course, the irony is all the greater since Bachmann's husband "Marcia" has to be the most visible closeted gay in the country at the moment. Yes, he's in deep, deep denial but as one commenter on an Advocate story remarked, when he "opens his mouth... chiffon spills out." Bachmann's latest anti-gay drivel came out when a woman confronted them with information about the size of the gay population based on the Kinsey Report at a campaign event in north central Iowa. Rather than running for president, both Bachmann and "Marcia" ought to be seeking treatment from legitimate mental health care experts as opposed to some quack clinic like the one they own that peddles lies and religious hocus pocus "cures." Here are highlights from The Advocate on the encounter:

Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus dismissed a woman who confronted them with information about the size of the gay population at a campaign event in north central Iowa on Sunday.

CNN reports on the exchange at a pizza restaurant, where the candidate was approached by a woman wearing a Bachmann sticker and holding a sign that said, “Gay-friendly Iowan.”

Schnell then said, "I wonder if you're aware that 10% of the population is gay. And if you have 28 children, then 2.8 of those kids are very likely gay." Bachmann seemed to ignore her, but then replied after Schnell commented that she was not listening.

"Well, that's according to the Kinsey Report," said Bachmann, in a reference to the sex researcher. Marcus Bachmann, who has been accused of offering therapy to “change” gay people at his clinic in Minnesota, said, "Your facts are wrong.”

"That's not valid?" asked Schnell. "No, it isn't," said the congresswoman before she moved to the next table. Her husband added, "No, it's not at all. It's been a myth for many years."

[T]he event also drew other gay rights activists, including a college student who wanted to ask Bachmann about gay teen suicides but was told she would not be taking questions.

If the Bachmann's want to talk about myths, then they need to come clean on the myth that "Marcia" isn't a huge closeted queen. He makes most drag queens look ultra-butch.

Delusional GOP Nutcases and the Run Up to 2012

George Will and I agree on very few things nowadays. But we do agree on one thing - that the lunatics and tawdry prostitute like panderers in the GOP are destroying that once respectable political party and driving more and more sane and even half-way thinking people running away from the GOP screaming. Will is especially harsh with Mike Huckabee - who Rachel Maddow suggested should stick to shilling for weight loss products - and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich. These two men - along with Rick Santorum and others of similar ilk who would prostitute their mothers if they thought it would endear them to ignorant, Bible thumping Christianist - are making the prospects of a viable GOP presidential candidate ever more difficult. Here are highlights from Will's Washington Post slam of the delusional loons who are increasingly the face of the GOP:
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If pessimism is not creeping on little cat's feet into Republicans' thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.
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The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who won the 2008 Republican caucuses in Iowa and reached that year's national convention with more delegates than Mitt Romney, and who might run again.
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Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich, who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" mentality.
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Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.
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Will the rank and file of the GOP get Will's message? Probably not for the simple reason that most of the GOP base is a least as crazy and untethered from reality as are Huckabee and Gingrich. Today's GOP base embraces ignorance, wild conspiracy theories, and a rejection of objective fact and reality.

An Unrestrained Tea Partier in Power

It seems I'm not the only one fearful of what Virginia's new Kool-Aid drinking attorney general will do to the state over the next four years inasmuch as he's already reaffirmed that gays in Virginia are second class citizens - indeed a class not even welcome to exist in Cuccinelli's world - and has now filed what is likely to prove to be a frivolous lawsuit that will deprive countless Virginians of health insurance coverage and/or the means to seek assistance with crushing insurance premium costs. Bob McDonnell, is not much better, although he is allowing Cuccinelli to be the out in the open lightning rod. All this in just two months from alleged "moderates." I pray to God that the media and voters will not fall for the obviously false moderate spiel from other GOP candidates. The Washington Post looks at Cuccinelli's teabagger jihad against progress and rationality. It is an unsettling situation and one has to wonder how McDonnell expects to be a "jobs governor" when the Cooch is doing all that he can to frighten people away from the state - including current residents. Here are highlights:
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Not five minutes after President Obama signed health-care legislation into law Tuesday, top staff members for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II made their way out of his office, court papers in hand and TV cameras in pursuit, and headed to Richmond's federal courthouse to sue to stop the measure.
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Cuccinelli (R) went his own way, arguing that a Virginia law enacted this month that prohibits the government from requiring people to buy health insurance creates an "immediate, actual controversy" between state and federal law that gives the state unique standing on which to sue.
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The move was classic Cuccinelli -- bold, defiant and in-your-face, an effort to use any means at his disposal to stop what he sees as a federal government gone wild. That approach has transformed him in just a few months from being a fairly obscure state senator into a national conservative folk hero -- a tea partier with conviction and, more importantly, power.
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But as the fervency and number of Cuccinelli's supporters have grown, so has the vigor of his detractors, who are convinced that he is an ideologue using his office to further a political agenda and that he is interested only in representing those who share his views.
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"He thinks he's the attorney general for Fox News," said Paul Goldman, a Richmond lawyer and former head of the Virginia Democratic Party. "He wants to be Glenn Beck's favorite attorney general, and he's moving right on up there."
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Cuccinelli's newfound stature in his party could create tension in Richmond, where just a few short weeks ago it was Gov. Robert F. McDonnell who was being held up as the new face of the Republican Party, chosen by national leaders to deliver the response to Obama's State of the Union address.
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Although ideologically in line with McDonnell, who was also elected in November and supports Cuccinelli's lawsuit to stop the health-care law, Cuccinelli and his confrontational style could complicate the governor's efforts to rebrand the GOP as inclusive and pragmatic.
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"This back-of-the-hand, gratuitous, finger-in-your-eye, hand-on-the-chest stuff -- people don't feel good about it," said a senior Republican strategist in Richmond, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid creating a rift in the party. "It's not how you build a broad-based coalition."
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It is hopefully becoming clear to all rational citizens that Cuccinelli is a nutcase and that Virginia's interests would be best served with him out of office and safely in a mental institution somewhere under heavy meds. Some of us called out alarm back during the campaign yet sadly, voters fell for the McDonnell/Cuccinelli campaign based on lies.

Palin's Bus Hoax

I previously reported on a Daily Kos story that claimed that Sarah Palin was traveling for her book tour on a private aircraft owned by a charity run by Billy Graham's son Franklin. It seems the Kos story was erroneous as to the ownership of the aircraft but not the use of a private aircraft by "average American" Palin who has been pretending to be making the book tour by bus. Sorry about the error. Nonetheless, the reality is that everything about Palin except her insanity is fake and made up. I continue to hope the woman shoots herself down with the incessant stream of lies and inability to descern the difference between her imagination and objective reality. The Daily Beast has a story on Palin's faux bus tour. Here are some highlights:

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As much of her entourage, including HarperCollins publicist Tina Andreadis, risked a collective case of White Line Fever, covering more than 3,000 road miles during the book tour’s first week, Sarah Palin herself seems to have remained above it all, apparently cosseted in the luxury of a Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour.
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And just before the tour started, Palin herself said on her Facebook page: “I’ll post our progress from the road.” To further the illusion, the populist heroine gave televised interviews from the bus, including one to Greta Van Susteren en route to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
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It seems now that Palin hasn’t been on the bus, except for short hops between local airports and hotels and book-signing sites. Instead, as first reported by the Alaskan blog Palingates, she’s apparently been aboard UJT750, the Gulfstream American twin-jet that she first boarded at Westchester County airport shortly after noon on November 18, bound for Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the first stop on her tour.
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The full activity log for UJT750 can be found here. The bottom line is that the plane’s goings and comings track Palin’s tour perfectly: from Grand Rapids to Washington, Pa. and then to Rochester, N.Y., Roanoke, Va., Fayetteville, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville and Orlando.
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Her next signing is not until Thursday, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Presumably, she’ll fly to Fayetteville and then board her bus again for the short ride to the local Sam’s Club. Presumably, she’ll also fly over the much greater distances that separate the stops on the western half of her tour, which stretches from Dallas to Minneapolis. Will she continue to pretend she’s riding the bus?

Former Bush Campaign Advisor Trashes McCain

More and more episodes revealing the lunacy of the GOP base continue to coming to light such as at a Palin rally in Scranton where shouts to kill Obama were heard. Meanwhile, high placed Republicans continue to jump ship and/or trash McCain, as the fate of the Party appears to dim. Among the latest to condemn McCain is Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush's reelection campaign as is being reported by the Huffington Post. Apparently, Dowd eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president. Here are some highlights:

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Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would "have to live" with that fact for the rest of his career. "They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP," Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. "When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race... as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible."

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Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."