A Challenge For Clinton And Her Party

Slate's Jamelle Bouie attributes much- probably too much- of the continuing erosion of support for the Democratic Party among working class whites to race.  But he recognizes

for a new rhetoric of populism to work—or at least, attract the winnable whites identified by Teixeira and Halpin—it needs to come with a commitment to universal policies that working-class whites like and support. (It’s no coincidence that the most liberal working-class whites belong to private and public sector unions.)

But the United States doesn’t have a political party to support that kind of social democracy. Instead, it has the Democratic Party, a collection of disparate interests which—at its best—is nervous about economic liberalism and hesitant to push anything outside the mainstream. And worse, it has a presidential frontrunner who—more than anyone else—is connected to the kinds of elites and the kinds of policies that would push the party away from the muscular liberalism it needs.

One of these ways has been the frontrunner's support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (videos below, from Truthloader; "MSNBC; and the The Young Turks; link to one from Acronym TV, here).  Earlier this year, reporter Jaime Fuller wrote

Hillary Clinton could also use a Trans-Pacific Partnership win. As secretary of state, building relationships with countries in Asia were among her top priorities. In October 2011, she wrote an essay in Foreign Policy titled, "America's Pacific Century." It provided an in-depth walkthrough of the Obama administration's planned pivot.

That was not mere payback to the president who has done more than anyone to promote her as his successor. Obama appointed Clinton Secretary of State, giving her an opportunity to build foreign policy gravitas, which she accomplished while- and largely by- constantly jetting around the globe. As Clinton was leaving the Administration and Obama  sat by her on "60 Minutes" and and virtually endorsed her for 2016, the President commented "I think Hillary will go down as one of the finest secretary of states we've had. It has been a great collaboration over the last four years. I'm going to miss her. Wish she was sticking around. But she has logged in so many miles...."

Though Fuller believes completion, and passage, of the TPP would aid a presidential run by the former Senator, Politico's Josh Gerstein suggests

After years of populist rhetoric against banks and Wall Street, repeated calls for raising the minimum wage and withering campaign-trail criticism of corporate America for shipping jobs overseas and dodging taxes, President Barack Obama could leave office with a foreign policy legacy whose most concrete achievement is a huge free trade deal with Pacific Rim countries.

On a trip through Asia and Australia over the past week, Obama and his aides have been pushing hard to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership, pressing foreign leaders from 11 countries to hash out their differences and get the pact done in the coming months....

But his history of bashing prior trade pacts also sets him up for renewed trouble with a political base frustrated with him after heavy election losses and a faltering agenda. Their ire could also hit presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who economic policies are already under attack from liberals and whose tenure at the State Department coincided with the TPP negotiations.

U.S. officials said they were surprised at how forcefully Obama pressed the free-trade message both in public and private during summit meetings in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday. And his sustained focus on the issue was refreshing after numerous other international meetings have been sidetracked by various crises, the American officials said.

In mid-2012, a press release issued by Citizens Trade Campaign explained

A leaked draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) investment chapter has been published online by Citizens Trade Campaign, the same coalition that first published TPP proposals from the United States on intellectual property,regulatory coherence and drug formularies in late 2011.  Draft texts are said to exist for some 26 separate chapters, none of which have ever been officially released by trade negotiators for public review.

“Americans deserve the right to know what U.S. negotiators are proposing in our names,” said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign.  “In the absence of transparency on the part of our government, we have a responsibility to share what information we receive about the TPP with the public.”

The new texts reveal that TPP negotiators are considering a dispute resolution process that would grant transnational corporations special authority to challenge countries’ laws, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems.

“We are just beginning to analyze the new texts now, but they clearly contain proposals designed to give transnational corporations special rights that go far beyond those possessed by domestic businesses and American citizens,” said Stamoulis.  “A proposal that could have such broad effects on environmental, consumer safety and other public interest regulations deserves public scrutiny and thorough public debate.  It shouldn’t be crafted behind closed doors.”

The continuing secrecy of the negotiations twenty-nine months later augments the realistic fear that jobs in the USA will be lost and the wage scale will decline. Support by the GOP for eliminating American jobs- euphemistically labeled "free trade" deals- gives the Democratic Party (and presumptive presidential nominee HRC) the opportunity to win back some of those working-class voters Democrats periodically insist they want.  . Ultimately, the Party will have to stand up and say "no" to the President who has lost track of most of what it means to be a Democrat. Or as Senator Elizabeth Warren earlier this year put it

Real people, people whose jobs are at stake, small-business owners who don’t want to compete with overseas companies that dump their waste in rivers and hire workers for a dollar a day—those people, people without an army of lobbyists—they would be opposed. I believe if people across this country would be opposed to a particular trade agreement, then maybe that trade agreement should not happen.”

















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Ignorance Is Bliss, Or At Least Convenient

In May, House Majority Leader John Boehner was asked by  a reporter "Are there steps you would support to take action against climate change, and do you think it's a problem?" Boehner stated "Listen, I'm not qualified to debate the science over climate change" before he explained that we shouldn't do anything about it.

Queried the same month about climate change, fraudster Rick Scott, en route to being re-elected governor of Florida, said "I'm not a scientist." Twice.  On her way in October to being elected to the U.S. Senate, ultra-right winger Jodi Ernst of Iowa maintained “I don’t know the science behind climate change. I can’t say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it’s man-made or not."

Asked at an interview on October 2 about climate change, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded "We can debate this forever.   George Will had a column in the last year or so pointing out that in the 70s, we were concerned the ice age was coming. I'm not a scientist. I'm interested in protecting Kentucky's economy." The same month, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor was asked by Howard Fineman about climate change and responded "I’d leave it to the scientists to decide how much, what it means, and what the consequences are…. Let the scientists debate and figure that out."

You might notice a pattern here.  While a few concede the existence of climate change (but generally claiming ignorance of its cause) and some deny it, Boehner, Scott, McConnell, and Jindal are among those Republicans who have gotten the memo and now skirt the issue of global warming by denying they are scientists.

They may even have noticed another pattern, though few Republicans will acknowledge it.   Meteorologist Eric Holthaus reports that we of the planet recently have experienced the warmest April on record, the warmest May on record, the warmest June on record, and the warmest September on record. Not surprisingly, then, April to September was the warmest six-month  period  and November, 2013-October, 2014 the warmest twelve-month period on record.  Moreover, these trends occurred in the absence of an El Nino, whose arrival tends to result in record-setting warmth because it warms the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest ocean (image below, from NASA, of October climate anomaly vs. 1951-1986).

Six months ago, Holthaus noted human beings "started burning fossil fuels in large quantities about 250 years ago." Yet, there has "been more greenhouse gas emissions in the last 40 years than over the previous 200" years..    That's a pattern even more disturbing than grown men and women putting their hands over their ears, closing their eyes and minds, and doing whatever they have to to pretend they aren't marching to the tune of the fossil fuel industry.

The possibilities are endless. Pressed on their view of agricultural subsidies for the genetically modified crops of corn and soy, Republicans can say "I'm not a farmer."  On cutting taxes for the wealthy, they can claim "I'm not an economist."  On requiring businesses to provide health care coverage that covers the cost of contraceptives for employees, GOP politicians can maintain "I'm not a doctor."  And on the great issues of war and peace, they can admit "I'm not a general," a claim that would have the added benefit of suggesting only effete liberals believe in civilian control of the military.

Without their input, it would be one small step for ignorance, one giant leap for effective government.



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Maybe, On Our Terms, If We Feel Like It

For readers in the greater Philadelphia, Pa. area, the news came with their morning coffee or commute to work. "Obama roars ahead with no compromise," read the Philadelphia Inquirer headline, an analysis by veteran Washington Post reporters Karen Tumulty and Juliet Eilperin.

The problem lies not in the headline- which accurately reflects the tenor of the story- but in the analysis itself, which reflects the prevailing perspective in the Fourth Estate.

One problem, Tumulty and Eilperin indicate, lies in the Executive order the President apparently will be issuing on immigration reform.  You remember the bill establishing comprehensive reform, approved by the U.S. Senate in June, 2013 by a vote of 68 to 32, including the support of 14 Republicans.   On June 30 of this year, announcing he'd prefer "permanent fixes" rather than "administrative action," the President warned he was "beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress."  Time is running out.

There also has been considerable consternation in the conservative media, including the mainstream portion of it, over Obama's public support for net neutrality, spurred by his recognition that internet service providers "have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business."  The 41 members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, who recently signed sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission opposing any action to ensure neutrality, evidently believe that ability to pay should determine access to the Internet.

We see a slightly different, somewhat improved Obama from the guy who, following the 2010 off-year elections, assertedhis party had been "shellacked," thereby himself claiming for the GOP a mandate.. By contrast, on November 5 of this year, the President maintained "To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too." Although Obama's declaration was partly motivated by strategic concerns, it was an acknowledgment that government of the people, by the people, and for the people ought to work for all Americans, a novel concept insufficiently elitist to many of the President's critics.

Even if the President's statement were meant to mollify the base of his party, it's a base which accepts compromise, as Obama always has. A post-election Pew Research Center poll revealed more Democrats want Obama to "work with Republicans even if it disappoints some Democratic supporters" than want him to "'stand up' to Republicans even if it gets done even if less gets done in Washington."  Unfortunately, 66% of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a different approach, preferringt the GOP to "stand up' to Obama even if less gets done in Washington."

It's not surprising. Now, not satisfied with 54 votes to weaken and/or destroy the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans (reports The Hill) "are mulling a hearing over ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber’s remark that the 'stupidity of the American voter' contributed to the law’s passage."   And Republicans are aghast at the likelihood of an executive order pertaining to illegal immigration primarily because; in the words of Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, "he was not elected king," notwithstanding Obama's paltry use of executive orders compared to every President going back to Benjamin Harrison and including Saint Reagan.

(The content of the expected Order is not wise policy- more on that at a later date. Suffice it to say, if the Obama government instead embarked on a process of deporting more illegal immigrants than previous Administrations, the Republicans would complain about his immigration policy. Wait- it did, and they did.)

If it's Obama, it's bad, as illustrated by the cartoons below from the Miami Herald's Jim Morin and as described by Steve M..   Like a Robert Frost character, the GOP has two choices in that, as Firedoglake's Jon Walker puts it, "They can try to get a few items approved in a deal with Obama now, or they can bet on trying to create a possible climate for a GOP win in 2016. That would give them full control of the federal government and allow them to advance many of their priorities. At the moment it seems many Republicans would prefer to second option."

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Rush Limbaugh Does Not Believe Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery.

Oh, what a poor, sensitive soul.  Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported Rush Limbaugh

is threatening to sue the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for a series of fundraising e-mails that suggested Limbaugh was condoning campus rape in comments he made on his widely syndicated program on Sept. 15.

In a letter to the Washington-based organization intended for delivery Monday morning, Limbaugh’s lawyer demanded a retraction and a public apology for the fundraising e-mails. The letter indicated Limbaugh will sue for defamation and business “interference” if his demand isn’t met.

DCCC representatives were not available Monday; the organization’s offices are closed for the Veterans Day holiday.

The legal threat is the result of DCCC fundraising appeals sent out in the wake of Limbaugh’s on-air comments about a new policy at Ohio State University that instructs students to get verbal consent before having sex. The DCCC highlighted one particular sentence from his commentary — “How many of you guys . . . have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it?” — saying it was tantamount to condoning sexual assault.

Limbaugh says the DCCC took the comment out of context and twisted it in its fundraising appeals. “We love opinions, but this crossed a very bright line,” said Limbaugh’s spokesman, Brian Glicklich, in an interview. “They lied about his words. They quoted something specific and out of context, and it is a lie.”

The DCCC used the comment in three e-mail blasts seeking funds and created a Web page encouraging supporters to boycott Limbaugh’s advertisers. “Comments of this offensive nature are inexcusable,” wrote the DCCC’s chairman, Rep. Steve Israel of New York, in one such e-mail. “Rush Limbaugh is advocating for the tolerance of sexual assault. He should be taken off the air immediately.”

Israel asked recipients to sign a petition calling on Limbaugh’s advertisers to stop supporting his program.

No, actually Rush wasn't taken out of context, for while complaining about a policy at Ohio State University he had stated

“How many of you guys, in your own experience with women, have learned that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ if you know how to spot it? I’m probably… Let me tell you something, in this modern (world)… that’s not tolerated. People aren’t even going to try to understand that one. It used to be said as a cliche, it used to be part of the advice young boys were given. See, that’s what we’ve got to change. We have got to reprogram the way we raise men. So now… permission every step of the way, clearly spelling out ‘why.’ (Are) these (rules) not lawsuits waiting to happen if even one of these steps is not taken?”

Whether that constitutes "advocating for the tolerance of sexual assault," as the DCCC claims, turns on one's definition of sexual assault, which seems to vary from one source to another. But the statement blasted by the DCCC isn't even Limbaugh's worst foray into the field of gender bias. Raw Story in mid-September revealed (audio/video way below)

Radio host Rush Limbaugh on Thursday suggested that football fans would reward a Florida State player’s behavior after he was suspended for shouting obscenities about female genitals.

Deadspin first reported on Tuesday that Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston had been seen by students standing on a table in the student union, and yelling, “f*ck her right in the p*ssy.”

The phrase is an Internet meme that was derived from a hoax video of a fake local news report.

Florida State officials announced on Wednesday that Winston would be benched for the first half of Saturday’s game against Clemson.

On his Thursday radio show, Limbaugh explained that Winston had been suspended for “shouting about vaginas and stuff.”

“I’m going to make a prediction to you,” the conservative host said. “I guarantee you when this guy shows up for the second half, he’s going to get a standing ovation.”

“He’s going to get a standing ‘O’ from the students. He’s going to get a standing ovation of support for having been suspended, and he’s going to get a standing ovation for having the guts.”

Limbaugh added: “He’s going to get a standing ovation for doing what he did. ‘That a way, that a way to bust through, man. Way to really blow out the envelope, man. That’s so cool.’ And they’re going to give him a standing ‘O.’ You wait and see.”

Rush really did say "he's going to get a standing ovation for having the guts."  We already recognized Limbaugh's attitude toward women; Sandra Fluke and most Americans have known that for some time.  What may be most astounding is that he wants to sue someone for appropriating his modus operandi, for allegedly taking something out of context.

Just yesterday, the man, the myth, the elitist and hypocrite par excellence agreed with a caller moaning about "general aviation" and commented "You mean when he attacks businesses or others for their charter flights like getting on a plane and going to Vegas like he did back in 2009?" A moment later Limbaugh continued

They try to stay under the radar, which means they try to incur less and less expense, and that all has a negative impact on people like you who work in that industry.  There's no question that Obama's stigmatized it, because, "That's 'the rich.' That's just wasted money. It's polluting the planet! Not everybody can do it, so it isn't fair," blah, blah, blah, blah.  As to your first question, do I think we're gonna restore the nation?

If none of this makes any sense, well, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh show. But the host evidently (as far as can be discerned because, well, he constantly takes things out of context) was referring to a couple of remarks made by President Obama, the first in early 2009 when, Obama admonished corporate executives by stating "You can't go take that trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on taxpayers' dime." In February, 2010 the President (making a false analogy between microeconomics and macroeconomics) remarked "When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

Somehow, that became Obama stigmatizing "people like you who work in that industry" (huh?).  And it became Obama saying "That's just wasted money. It's polluting the planet." The claim  "Rush Limbaugh is advocating for the tolerance of sexual assault" in his most recent remarks is debatable. Claiming President Obama is stigmatizing middle-class people because he criticized people who own one or more private planes represents a flight from reality (photos of Limbaugh's private Gulfstream jet, below). Saying Obama was complaining about "polluting the planet" is testing the outer reaches of fantasy

"They quoted something specific and out of context, and it is a lie,”  says plaintiff's lawyer. As Tom Sullivan, blogging at Hullabaloo, recognizes "Uh, that's Limbaugh's business model, pal. Is Rush suing for defamation or patent infringement?"

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Piers Morgan Says Something Which Shouldn't Be Necessary. Apparently, It Is.

Piers Morgan writes

N****r.

A 6-letter noun in the English language which the dictionary defines as ‘a contemptuous term for a black or dark-skinned person’.

It’s such an inflammatory and offensive word that for any high profile white person to publicly use it, without abbreviating to ‘N-word’, is rightly tantamount to professional suicide and personal opprobrium.

I don’t use it; would never use it. But it has become astonishingly ubiquitous in modern American society.

According to a new data survey by social media analytics Web site Topsy.com, it will be used, either as ‘n****r’ or ‘n***a’, 500,000 times on Twitter today....

The reason it is so ingrained in pop culture is that many blacks, especially young blacks reared to the soundtrack of N-word splattered rap music, use it in an ironic way.

They’re aware of its history; they know from their parents and grandparents that arrogant, dumb, racist whites used it as a wicked, derogatory insult against their black slave forebears. And they enjoy the freedom of being able to say it now in the knowledge that it’s become taboo for whites to do so....

But I don’t like it.

And this is why: it doesn’t work. It has the complete opposite effect to the one that I imagine everyone who does this imagines it will have.

Far from ‘owning’ these words, seizing back control with the use of them, I believe it merely serves to empower those who wish to deploy them abusively - and encourage them to continue doing so.

Your average dim-witted, foul-mouthed bigot – and there are plenty of them as Twitter can attest – thinks: ‘If they use it, why can’t I?

’

They hear African-Americans say the N-word to each other and claim victory: ‘See, that’s what they even call themselves!’

It’s the twisted, horrible mind-set of the wretchedly ignorant.

Reaction, mostly but entirely negative, was swift. In one of a series of twitter response's to Morgan's column, John Legend (photo of him and Morgan, below, from Vibe) went sarcastic, remarking "ya'll better thank @piersmorgan for providing that simple, straightforward solution to racism. So brilliant.  why didn't we think of this???"  Perhaps because Morgan, maintaining "I just think it's the right thing to do," does not hold out the hope there would be some colossal benefit from avoiding the word.

Rap disc jockey Jay Smooth, also known as John Randolph, went ad hominem, tweeting "The problem with @piersmorgan's theory is that black people already spent years never talking about Piers Morgan, and yet he's still here."  Morgan is sorry to disappoint you, Jay/John.

Exquistely sensitive Alternet Senior Editor Terrell J. Starr tweeted "If racism is what Piers Morgan wants to end, perhaps he needs to speak to WHITE PEOPLE and not us BLACK PEOPLE. We don't need his lecture."  Here is Starr's idea of a "lecture":  "As a white man, I have no right to demand that any black person gives up using the N-word.But as someone who believes passionately in civil rights, I just think it’s the right thing to do." Now that's intimidating!

To newly-credentialed anthropologist Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Banning 'nigger' means exempting black people from a basic rule of communication- that words take on a meaning from context and relationship."  So let's try this on: 

Frustrated Georgetown law professor Paul Butler asked rhetorically "Is it too much to expect white people to understand there’s some things that they can’t do, that black people can do?"

Uh, yea, Paul, because that's called a double standard.  It's also placing the bar quite low for black people, lower than for other individuals, to suggest that blacks should not be expected to refrain from doing something as vile as Butler, Morgan, and most people believe it is. (This is what many folks refer to as the "soft bigotry of low expectations," but I never liked the phrase and evidence that Butler is bigoted is scant.) 

It is true, as some of Morgan's critics noted, that whites will not completely stop using the n-word if and when blacks do. But it would eliminate one excuse, one which argues that if the people who most object to the term- and against whom it is brandished- use it, it must be just fine.

And it would reduce, substantially or otherwise, use of the term by non-blacks, for most of whom it would eliminate what little respectability it has. Presumably, Piers Morgan's critics would be pleased. Presumably.

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He Could Be Worse. He Could Be One Of The Other Three.

It would be sacrilegious to castigate John McCain, of all people, on Veterans Day. So call me sacrilegious.

In a recent interview with Salon, Elias Isquith asked the Arizona senator (photo below from Jeff Malet via Salon) remarked

[At the beginning of his presidency], I think the president had two choices: one was [to take on] healthcare reform, and the other was [to address the] debt and the deficit. I believe that … historians may view that as a mistake, not to have gone to debt and deficit reduction when he had 60 votes in the Senate and an overwhelming majority in the House … That might have been something that would have been significantly more impactful and long-lasting than the Affordable Care Act.

McCain warns "everyone that I have talked to that's smart on it says within three, four, five years- as we see the dramatic increase in enrollment in the entitlement programs- it's going to start going back up."

Rest assured, Senator, historians will not view as a mistake he failure to pursue debt reduction while we were in the throes of the Great Recession. In July, Paul Krugman explained

For much of the past five years readers of the political and economic news were left in little doubt that budget deficits and rising debt were the most important issue facing America. Serious people constantly issued dire warnings that the United States risked turning into another Greece any day now. President Obama appointed a special, bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the alleged fiscal crisis, and spent much of his first term trying to negotiate a Grand Bargain on the budget with Republicans.

That bargain never happened, because Republicans refused to consider any deal that raised taxes. Nonetheless, debt and deficits have faded from the news. And there’s a good reason for that disappearing act: The whole thing turns out to have been a false alarm.

I’m not sure whether most readers realize just how thoroughly the great fiscal panic has fizzled — and the deficit scolds are, of course, still scolding. They’re even trying to spin the latest long-term projections from the Congressional Budget Office — which are distinctly non-alarming — as somehow a confirmation of their earlier scare tactics. So this seems like a good time to offer an update on the debt disaster that wasn’t.

About those projections: The budget office predicts that this year’s federal deficit will be just 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 9.8 percent in 2009. It’s true that the fact that we’re still running a deficit means federal debt in dollar terms continues to grow — but the economy is growing too, so the budget office expects the crucial ratio of debt to G.D.P. to remain more or less flat for the next decade.

Things are expected to deteriorate after that, mainly because of the impact of an aging population on Medicare and Social Security. But there has been a dramatic slowdown in the growth of health care costs, which used to play a big role in frightening budget scenarios. As a result, despite aging, debt in 2039 — a quarter-century from now! — is projected to be no higher, as a percentage of G.D.P., than the debt America had at the end of World War II, or that Britain had for much of the 20th century. Oh, and the budget office now expects interest rates to remain fairly low, not much higher than the economy’s rate of growth. This in turn weakens, indeed almost eliminates, the risk of a debt spiral, in which the cost of servicing debt drives debt even higher.

In promoting the Affordable Care Act, the President yielded to GOP concerns and took painful steps to assure, as much as possible, that reform would not add to the deficit. He did so, in part, by including a medical device tax, which McCain specifically cited to Isquith as a needed change in the law.  The tax likely will not bring in a great deal of revenue, but McCain's concern that it will drive business offshore is likely misguided because, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted, it "applies equally to imported and domestically produced devices, and devices produced in the United States for export are tax-exempt."

Nonetheless, the Arizonan claims "it has not been a success at all," probably because the GOP raison d'etre is to explode the federal deficit, whether by cutting or eliminating a tax or by jacking up spending.  

And as you would expect, there is one area in which the Senator never would question spending.  He reminds readers that he was an avowed supporter of arming the Free Syrian Army, one of the groups fighting the Syrian regime of Bashir Assad.  Wherever it might be- Iraq early in the last decade, Iran, Libya, Syria, Israel, or Iraq and Syria again- John McCain has been vocally on the side of more intervention and/or more weapon transfers and greater use of the American military. There is rarely a mention of cost- which probably already exceeds $1 billion for the anti-ISIL campaign (photo below from Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments),  for that would not be compatible with the weeping and the gnashing of teeth over deficits.

But on Veterans Day, it is only appropriate to say something nice about Senator McCain. Of the last four Repub nominees (McCain, Palin, Romney, Ryan) for national office, John McCain still makes the greatest amount of sense.

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Focusing On The Big Stick

From time to time, Sarah Palin goes on a rant which seems to mimic gibberish.  But things are not always as they seem.  Under the subject line "President Palling Around With Terrorists," she recently wrote on her Facebook page

Good God, Mr. President. To partner with Iran is to trust the enemy, which is insane. Iran has complicity in the rise of ISIS as it supports radical militias and arms Islamic terrorists.

You've been the luckiest man in the world, in an un-American Democracy sort of way, to have had the liberal media in your lap allowing you to execute the least transparent presidency in history while they mock and destroy your critics for you. Until now. Even they must see that without accountability you are leading us into very, very dangerous territory.

In the 2008 campaign Sen. McCain and I warned, on behalf of every reasonable person, that your willingness to negotiate with terrorists would get Americans killed; that pulling an anti-Reagan move by taking our Big Stick of strength and putting it in the hands of any foe could be insurmountably devastating for our allies. Iran is one of Israel's staunchest enemies. Mr. President, who is advising you to come against Israel?

What is wrong with you, Barack Obama? You can not pal around with terrorists and expect us to survive. 

Of course, President Obama is not trying "to partner" with Iran but merely to negotiate an end to that nation's nuclear program.  Never mind that "partner" is not a verb, nor that Palin, who believes Obama has decided to "trust" Iran, once characterized as "America's lifeguard" the President who illegally sold weapons to Tehran.

But, whoa! What is that she said about the nation's big stick? Obama, she maintains, is "taking our Big Stick of strength and putting it in the hands of any foe" which could harm our allies. "Mr. President," she asks "who is advising you to come against Israel?"

We now know more about the ex-governor's sexual preferences than we ever wanted to know but her sex life, thankfully, remains a mystery. Among the 45-50 individuals commenting on the post, no one seems to notice what what their heroine is saying, although one man who recommended
impeachment appropriately implored her (or possibly Obama; hard to tell) "Do not sleep with the enemy."

Perhaps instead of recommending the President not "come against Israel," Sarah Palin should discuss with her husband her intriguing Big Stick policy.


(hat tip to Digby, below, photo from Salon; enough of Palin for now)

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