DES MOINES (The Borowitz Report)—Eager to shore up their pro-life credentials, several Republican Presidential candidates used campaign appearances on Wednesday to assert that the babies of undocumented workers have the right to be born and then immediately deported.
Matt Taibbi hit the road with the Republican Party circus Illustration by Victor Juhasz Alan: Not only does Matt Taibbi have an unfailing nose for bullshit disguised as anodyne platitude, he also crafts figures-of-speech to better advantage than any other political commentator currently attending the circus.Excerpts: Later in the day, back across the state in Rockwell City, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum played the same tune at the town's "Corn Daze" festival. Dressed in jeans, a blue oxford and a face so pious that Christ would be proud to eat a burrito off it...Santorum actually won the Iowa race four years ago with his overcaffeinated, kiss-the-most-babies approach. But watching both he and Christie put their chips on the shoe-leather approach to campaigning feels like watching a pair of Neanderthals scout for mammoth. In the Age of Trump, this stuff doesn't play anymore.
Trump has blown up even the backroom version of the issues-driven campaign... There's no hidden platform behind the shallow facade. With Trump, the facade is the whole deal. If old-school policy hucksters like Christie can't find a way to beat a media master like Trump at the ratings game, they will soon die out.
In a perverse way, Trump has restored a more pure democracy to this process. He's taken the Beltway thinkfluencers out of the game and turned the presidency into a pure high-school-style popularity contest conducted entirely in the media. Everything we do is a consumer choice now, from picking our shoes to an online streaming platform to a presidential nominee.
The irony, of course, is that when America finally wrested control of the political process from the backroom oligarchs, the very first place where we spent our newfound freedom and power was on the campaign of the world's most unapologetic asshole. It may not seem funny now, because it's happening to us, but centuries from this moment, people will laugh in wonder.
America is ceasing to be a nation, and turning into a giant television show. And this Republican race is our first and most brutal casting call.
Inside the GOP Clown Car
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Donald Trump's antics have forced the other candidates to get crazy or go home
he thing is, when you actually think about it, it's not funny. Given what's at stake, it's more like the opposite, like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we're all living like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks, we'll probably look back at this moment as the beginning of the end.
In the meantime, though, the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination sure seems funny. The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It's like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can't tear your eyes away from it.
It will go down someday as the greatest reality show ever conceived. The concept is ingenious. Take a combustible mix of the most depraved and filterless half-wits, scam artists and asylum Napoleons America has to offer, give them all piles of money and tell them to run for president. Add Donald Trump. And to give the whole thing a perverse gravitas, make the presidency really at stake.
It's Western civilization's very own car wreck. Even if you don't want to watch it, you will. It's that awesome of a spectacle.
But what does it mean? Or to put it another way, since we know it can't mean anything good: Is this enough of a disaster that we shouldn't laugh?
I went to Iowa to see for myself.
Rockwell City, Iowa, evening, July 30th. I've just rushed up from Des Moines to catch my first event on the Clown Car tour, a stump speech by TV personality Mike Huckabee, whom the Internet says was also once governor of Arkansas.
Traditionally, in these early stages of a presidential campaign, very little happens. Candidates treat their stump work like comedians practicing new material between the lunch and dinner hours. In the old days, they tiptoed their positions out before small audiences in little farm towns like this in an effort to see what minor policy tweaks might play better later on in the race, when the bullets start flying for real.
That's what one normally expects. But 2016 is very different, as I found out in Rockwell City right away.
Two factors have combined to make this maybe the most unlikely political story of our times. The first is the campaign's extraordinary number of entrants. As TheWashington Postnoted last fall, this is the first time in recent memory that there is no heir-apparent candidate (like a Bob Dole). For some reason, during the last years of the Obama presidency, the national Republican Party chose not to throw its weight behind anyone, leading a monstrous field of has-beens and never-weres to believe that they had a real shot at winning the nomination.
So throughout this spring and summer, a new Human Punchline seemingly jumped into the race every week. There were so many of these jokers, coming so fast, that news commentators quickly latched onto the image of a parade of clowns emerging from a political Volkswagen, giving birth to the "clown car" theme.
But the more important factor has been the astounding presence of Donald Trump as the front-runner. The orangutan-haired real estate magnate entered the race in mid-June and immediately blew up cable and Twitter by denouncing Mexicans as rapists and ripping 2008 nominee John McCain for having been captured in war.
Donald Trump announces his presidential candidacy in New York City on June 16th, 2015. Steve Sands/Getty
Both moves would have been fatal to "serious" candidates in previous elections. But amid the strange Republican leadership void of 2016, the furor only gave Trump further saturation among the brainless nativists in his party and inexplicably vaulted him to front-runner status. The combination of Trump constantly spewing crazy quotes and the strategy actuallyworkingturned his campaign into a veritable media supernova, earning the Donald more coverage than all of the other candidates combined.
This led to a situation where the candidates have had to resort to increasingly bizarre tactics in order to win press attention. Add to this the curious dynamic of the first Republican debate, on August 6th, in which only the top 10 poll performers get on the main stage, and the incentive to say outlandish things in search of a poll bump quickly reached a fever pitch. So much for the cautious feeling-out period: For the candidates, it was toss grenades or die.
Back in the Rockwell City library, the small contingent of reporters covering the day's third "Huckabee Huddle" was buzzing. A local TV guy was staring at his notes with a confused look on his face, like he couldn't believe what he read. "Weirdest thing," he said. "I was just in Jefferson, and Huckabee said something about invoking the 14th and 5th amendments to end abortion. I'm really not sure what he meant."
This GOP race is a minute-to-minute contest for media heat and Internet hits, where positive and negative attention are almost equally valuable.
A moment later, Huckabee sauntered into the library for an ad-hoc presser, and was quickly asked what he meant. "Just what I said," he quipped. "It is the job of the federal government to protect the citizens under the Constitution."
He went on to explain that even the unborn were entitled to rights of "due process and equal protection." The attendant reporters all glanced sideways at one another. The idea of using the 14th Amendment, designed to protect the rights of ex-slaves, as a tool to outlaw abortion in the 21st century clearly would have its own dark appeal to the Fox crowd. But it occurred to me that Huckabee might have had more in mind.
"Are we talking about sending the FBI or the National Guard to close abortion clinics?" I asked.
"We'll see when I get to be president," he answered.
Huckabee smiled. Perhaps alone among all the non-Trump candidates, Huckabee knows what kind of fight he's in. This GOP race is not about policy or electability or even raising money. Instead, it's about Nielsen ratings or trending. It's a minute-to-minute contest for media heat and Internet hits, where positive and negative attention are almost equally valuable.
Huckabee launched his campaign on May 5th, running on a carefully crafted and somewhat unconventional Republican platform centered around economic populism, vowing to end "stagnant wages" and help people reach a "higher ground."
But emphasizing economic populism is the kind of wonky policy nuance that doesn't do much to earn notice in the Twitter age. After an early bump pushed him briefly up to fourth place, Huckabee began a steady slide in the polls as the unrestrained lunacy of Trump began seizing control of the race. By late July, Huckabee's numbers had fallen, and he had to be worrying that he would land out of the top 10.
But then, on July 25th, Huckabee gave an interview to Breitbart News in which he shamelessly invoked Godwin's Law, saying that Barack Obama's deal with Iran "would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven."
The quote hit the airwaves like a thunderclap. Virtually everyone in the English-speaking world with an IQ over nine shrieked in disgust. The Huckster's "ovens" rant brought MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski to near-tears on air. Huckabee even prompted an Israeli transportation minister to exclaim, Dirty Dancing-style, "Nobody marches the Jews to ovens anymore."
Even in Huckabee's own party, he was denounced. Jeb Bush, anxious to cast himself as the non-crazy, Uncola Republican in a field of mental incompetents, called on everyone to "tone down the rhetoric." Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, known as one of America's most dickishly unscrupulous hate merchants, said, "You're not hearing me use that sort of language."
But far from being deterred by all of the negative attention, Huckabee shrewdly embraced it. Much like the Donald, Huckabee swallowed up the negative press energy like a Pac-Man and steamed ahead, and was soon climbing in the polls again.
Huckabee had stumbled into the truth that has been driving the support for the Trump campaign: That in this intensely media-driven race, inspiring genuine horror and disgust among the right people is worth a lot of votes in certain quarters, irrespective of how you go about it. If you're making an MSNBC anchor cry or rendering a coastal media villain like Anderson Cooper nearly speechless (as Trump has done), you must be doing something right.
In Rockwell City, it seemed like Huckabee was consciously trying to repeat his "ovens" stunt. He smiled as the media in attendance filed out of the presser, surely knowing we would have the "we'll see" quote up on social media within minutes.
At the event, he was glowingly introduced by Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King, who revved the crowd by bashing the Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for gay marriage. King had apparently been told on good authority by a lawyer friend that Obergefell v. Hodges meant that only one party in a marriage had to be a human being. "What that means," he said, "is you can now marry my lawn mower."
A reporter next to me leaned over. "King's lawn mower is gay?"
I shrugged. In the modern Republican Party, making sense is a secondary consideration. Years of relentless propaganda combined with extreme frustration over the disastrous Bush years and two terms of a Kenyan Muslim terrorist president have cast the party's right wing into a swirling suckhole of paranoia and conspiratorial craziness. There is nothing you can do to go too far, a fact proved, if not exactly understood, by the madman, Trump.
Huckabee's speech tossed plenty of red meat into the grinder, explaining that America was divinely created by "providence of almighty God," which is the only explanation for the extreme longevity of the Constitution. He stepped down to hearty applause, giving way to a performance by a group of Rockwell City Republican women, who sang what they called a "rap song." There was no beat and each of the 10-odd singers was off from the next by a word or two:
People want the freedom
To make medical and personal choices!
And we want representatives
To listen to our voices!
Listening, I suddenly worried that the International Federation of Black People would detect this "rap" performance from afar and call in an air strike. Sneaking out the front door, I checked my phone to see how Huck's abortion-clinic play was doing: He'd already set off a media shitstorm.
Within 24 hours, he was being denounced across the blogosphere, but he was soon riding up in the polls again, one of the few shoo-ins to get on the main stage of the August 6th debate.
Mike Huckabee campaigns in Tinley Park, Illinois, on July 31st, 2015. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
It was astounding, watching the other entrants try to duplicate Huckabee's feat. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was last seen on the national stage choking on his own face in an infamous 2011 debate performance, when he was unable to name the three federal agencies he himself had promised to do away with. He returned to the race this year basically the same gaffe-spewing yutz he was four years ago, only dressed in preposterous "smart" glasses, a deadly error in a fight with a natural schoolyard bully like Donald Trump.
"He put glasses on so people will think he's smart," Trump croaked. "And it just doesn't work!"
Perry was so grateful to even be mentioned by Trump that he refocused his campaign apparatus on an epic response, apparently in an attempt to draw the Donald into a Drake/Meek Mill-style diss war. He tossed off a 3,000-word speech denouncing "Trumpism" as the modern incarnation of the Know-Nothing movement (one could almost hear Trump scoffing, "What the fuck is a Know-Nothing?"). He decried Trump himself as a "barking carnival act" and a "cancer" that the party should "excise" for its own sake — and, one supposes, for Rick Perry's.
Trump, too busy being front-runner to notice Perry's desperate volleys, basically blew the Texan off. A week later, Perry was in a tie for 10th place in the polls. Asked if his campaign was finished if he didn't make the debate cut, Perry replied, in characteristically malaprop fashion, that making the debate was "not a one-shot pony." He ended up missing his shot, or his pony, or whatever, and was squeezed out of the debate.
Many of the entrants tried nutty media stunts to re-inject energy into the race. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul attempted to revive his flagging libertarian-niche campaign by putting out a video. In it, the candidate appears dressed in shop goggles and jeans, curly hair flying, chain-sawing the tax code in half. He looks like Ryan Phillippe doing a Billy Mays ad.
Then there was South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the few candidates with a sense of humor about how much of a long shot he is. "I do bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, weddings, funerals – call me, I'll come," he cracked. Once in the race, though, Graham immediately trolled Trump by calling him a "jackass," then briefly enjoyed some press limelight when the furious front-runner gave out Graham's telephone number to the public.
Graham responded to the blessing of a Trump insult by putting out a video celebrating his Trump-victimhood. In it, the candidate chops up his cellphone Ginsu-style, mixes it in a blender in a foul-looking yellow liquid, and whacks it with a nine-iron, or maybe a wedge (note: the Graham camp says it was a nine).
All of this actually happened. Can we be that far from candidates putting out dueling cat videos?
In late July, in a cramped conference room of a Marriott in West Des Moines, Graham showed up to introduce himself to voters. In person, he's an odd character, like an oversize ventriloquist's dummy, with too-bright eyes and cheeks frozen in a half-grin.
He calls his event a "No Nukes for Iran" rally. Clearly gunning for a Cabinet post in Defense or Homeland Security, Graham is running almost a one-issue race, campaigning on being the candidate who most thinks Barack Obama's Iran deal sucks.
Of course, all 17 of the Republican candidates think Obama's Iran deal sucks, but Graham wants you to know he really thinks it sucks. Part of his stump speech is ripped straight fromTeam America: He thinks the Iran deal will result in "9/11 times a hundred." Actually in Graham's version, it's 9/11 times a thousand.
"The only reason 3,000 of us died on 9/11 and not 3 million," he said, "is they could not get the weapons."
Graham would seem to be perfectly suited for this Twitter-driven race, because he has a reputation in Washington for being a master of the one-liner and a goofball with boundaries issues who not infrequently crosses lines in his humor. "Did you see Nancy Pelosi on the floor?" he reportedly once quipped. "Complete disgust. If you can get through the surgeries, it's disgust."
But in person, Graham is a dud. His nasal voice and dry presentation make Alan Greenspan seem like Marilyn Manson. Still, it doesn't take too long for him to drift into rhetoric that in a normal political season would distinguish him as an unhinged lunatic, which is interesting because pundits usually call Graham one of the "sane" candidates.
First, he firmly promised to re-litigate the Iraq War. "I'm gonna send some soldiers back to Iraq," he said. "If I'm president, we're going back to Iraq."
Promising concretely to restart a historically unpopular war is a solid Trump-era provocation, but Graham then took it a step further. He pledged to solve the Syria problem by channeling Lawrence of Arabia and leading an Arab army in an epic campaign to unseat the caliphate.
Graham, a politician who reportedly once said that "everything that starts with 'al-' in the Middle East is bad news," insisted he was just the man to unite the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Turks and other peoples in battle, and also get them to pay for the invasion (getting dirty foreigners to pay for our policies is another Trump innovation). "We're going into Syria with the Arabs in the lead," Graham said. "They will do most of the fighting, and they're gonna pay for it because we paid for the last two."
I looked around the room. No reaction whatsoever. An old man in the rear of the hall was picking a cuticle off his middle finger, but otherwise, nobody moved. There were reporters, but Graham's hawkish bleatings don't rate much in an America obsessed with Caitlyn and Rachel Dolezal and the Donald.
Instead, later that same day, news leaked out that a Trump political adviser, Sam Nunberg, had once referred to Al Sharpton's daughter as a "n-----" on Facebook. This is news. It virtually obliterated all other campaign information.
Within a day, polls showed Trump surging like never before. One Reuters poll released on August 1st showed him scoring nearly 30 percent of the vote. The second-highest contender, Jeb Bush, was now nearly 20 points off the lead. When Trump completed the news cycle by giving Nunberg an Apprentice-style firing, his triumph was total.
If the clowns who engaged Trump mostly came out looking awful, the ones who didn't engage him came out looking even worse, including several of the ostensible favorites.
Jeb Bush was supposedly the smarter Bush brother and also the presumptive front-runner in this race. But on July 4th, just a few weeks after entering the race, Trump basically ended the fight in one fell swoop with a single kick in the balls, retweeting that Bush has to like "Mexican illegals because of his wife."
With a wife's honor at stake, most self-respecting males would have immediately stalked Trump and belted him in the comb-over. But Bush stayed true to his effete Richie Rich rep and turtled. He said nothing and instead meekly had an aide put out a statement that Trump's words were "inappropriate and not reflective of the Republican Party's views."
It was such a bad showing that the Beltway opinionators at Politico ran a story asking, "Is Jeb Bush turning into Michael Dukakis?" Game, set, match! Bush has been plunging in the polls ever since.
A similar fate befell Marco Rubio, the boy-wonder Republican. Rubio cruised through the early portion of the race, when voters were impressed by his sideswept, anal-retentive, Cuban-Alex-Keaton persona, rising as high as 14 percent in the polls. But then Trump entered the race and blasted the clearly less-than-completely-American Rubio for favoring a pro-immigration bill. "Weak on immigration" and "weak on jobs," Trump scoffed. "Not the guy."
He battered Rubio with tweet after tweet, one-liner after one-liner. Trump aides hit Rubio for having "zero credibility" and being a "typical politician" who favored a "dangerous amnesty bill." Rubio meanwhile defended Mexicans in general after Trump's "rapists" line, but has passed on engaging Trump's personal attacks. As a result, Rubio's support for a path to citizenship for the undocumented has stood out like a herpes sore, and he's plummeted to five percent in the polls.
The only candidate to really escape Trump's wrath has been Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and that's because Cruz has spent the entire political season nuzzling Trump's ankles, praising the Donald like a lovesick cellmate. The Texas senator, whose rhetorical schtick is big doses of Tea Party crazy (his best line was that Obama wanted to bring "expanded Medicaid" to ISIS) mixed with constant assurances that he's the most Reagan-y of all the candidates, even reportedly had an hourlong "confab" with Trump. "Terrific," he said of the meeting, calling Trump "one of a kind."
The subterranean Cruz-Trump communiqués are a fantastic subplot to this absurdist campaign, hashtagClownCar's very own Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. It could mean the two plan to run together, or it could mean Cruz will plead for Trump's votes if and when the party finds a way to beg, threaten or blackmail Donald out of the race. Whatever it means, it's a microcosm of the campaign: simultaneously disgusting and entertaining.
It's not surprising that Trump's most serious competition will likely come from Wisconsin's Walker, who is probably the only person in the race naturally meaner than Trump.
Gov. Scott Walker listens as Donald Trump responds at the first Republican debate. Scott Olson
A central-casting Charmless White Guy who looks like a vice principal or an overdressed traffic cop, Walker traced a performance arc in the past year that was actually a signal of what was to come with Trump. Back in February, when addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, Walker answered a question of how he would deal with Islamic terrorists by saying, "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world."
Like Trump's Mexican remarks, Walker's gambit comparing American union workers to head-chopping Islamic terrorists seemed like a bridge too far even for many Republicans. He was criticized by the National Review and future opponent Perry, among others. But instead of plummeting in the polls, Walker, like Trump, gained ground.
The irony is that this was supposed to be the year when the Republicans opened the tent up, made a sincere play for the Hispanic vote, and perhaps softened up a bit on gays and other vermin. But then the lights went on in the race and voters flocked to a guy whose main policy plank was the construction of a giant Game of Thrones-style wall to keep rape-happy ethnics off our lawns. So much for inclusion!
Waterloo, Iowa, August 1st. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie showed up at Lincoln Park downtown to attend the Cedar Valley Irish fest, a multiday fair with street cuisine, tents full of hand-made crafts, live music and a 5K road race. In a state where a more typical event is a stale VFW hall buffet or a visit to the world's largest truck stop (the I-80 meet-and-greet is a staple of Iowa campaigning), the Irish fest is a happening scene, featuring good food and sizable numbers of people under the age of 60.
Two years ago, Christie's arrival at an event like this would have been a major political event. Back then, Christie was a national phenomenon, a favorite to be dubbed presumptive front-runner for 2016.
Christie's the type of candidate political audiences have come to expect: Once every four years, commentators in New York and Washington will fall in love with some "crossover" politician who's mean enough to be accepted by the right wing, but also knows a gay person or once read a French novel or something. In the pre-Trump era, we became conditioned to believe that this is what constituted an "exciting" politician.
Christie was to be that next crossover hit, the 2016 version of McCain. Washington's high priest of Conventional Wisdom, Mark Halperin, even called him "magical," and Time called him a guy who "loves his mother and gets it done."
But two years later, Christie has been undone by "Bridgegate," and the buzz is gone. When he showed up at Cedar Falls, there were just a few reporters to meet him. One of the Iowa press contingent explained to me that with the gigantic field, some of the lesser candidates are falling through the cracks. "We just don't have enough bodies to cover the race," the reporter said. "It's never been like this."
Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, made their way patiently through the crowd, shaking hands and talking football and other topics with a handful of attendees. It was old-school politics, the way elections used to be won in this country, but it was hard not to watch this painstaking one-person-at-a-time messaging and wonder how it competes in the social-media age.
Trump has perversely restored democracy to the process, turning the race into a pure high school popularity contest conducted in the media.
After the event, I asked Christie whether the huge field makes it difficult to get media attention. "Well, I've never had any trouble getting attention," he said. "I just think it's differentiating yourself. I think it plays to our strengths, because we've always worked really hard."
Right, hard work: that old saw. Later in the day, back across the state in Rockwell City, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum played the same tune at the town's "Corn Daze" festival. Dressed in jeans, a blue oxford and a face so pious that Christ would be proud to eat a burrito off it, Santorum rushed through a speech explaining that it is in fact he who is the hardest-working man in politics.
"I just want to let you know that we've gone to about 55 counties," he said. "Last time, we went to 99. We'll probably have 99 done here in the next few weeks."
I asked how anyone can distinguish himself or herself in a field with so many entrants? "Win Iowa," he answered curtly.
Right, but how? "What happens in August stays in August," he said mysteriously, then vanished to his next event. He had, like, 11 events in three days, far more than most other candidates.
Santorum actually won the Iowa race four years ago with his overcaffeinated, kiss-the-most-babies approach. But watching both he and Christie put their chips on the shoe-leather approach to campaigning feels like watching a pair of Neanderthals scout for mammoth. In the Age of Trump, this stuff doesn't play anymore.
Not that the old guard will go down without a fight. The much-anticipated inaugural Clown Debate in Cleveland was an ambush. Fox kicked off the festivities by twice whacking Trump, Buford Pusser-style, asking him to promise not to make a third-party run (he wouldn't) and sandbagging him with questions about his history of calling women "fat pigs" ("Only Rosie O'Donnell," Trump quipped). After the show, Fox had Republican pollster Frank Luntz organize a focus group that universally panned Trump's performance. "A total setup," one of Trump's aides complained on Twitter.
Trump didn't seem to care. Hell, he didn't even prepare for the debate. "Trump doesn't rehearse," an aide told reporters. All he did was show up and do what he always does: hog everything in sight, including airtime. As hard as Fox tried to knock him out, the network couldn't take its eyes off him. He ended up with almost two full minutes more airtime than the other "contestants," as he hilariously called them on the Today show the morning after the debate. It's the scorpion nature of television, come back to haunt the "reality-makers" at Fox: The cameras can't resist a good show.
Politics used to be a simple, predictable con. Every four years, the money men in D.C. teamed up with party hacks to throw their weight behind whatever half-bright fraud of a candidate proved most adept at snowing the population into buying a warmed-over version of the same crappy policies they've always bought.
Pundits always complained that there wasn't enough talk about issues during these races, but in reality, issues were still everything. Behind the scenes, where donors gave millions for concrete favors, there was always still plenty of policy. And skilled political pitchmen like Christie, who could deftly deliver on those back-room promises to crush labor and hand out transportation contracts or whatever while still acting like a man of the people, were highly valued commodities.
Not anymore. Trump has blown up even the backroom version of the issues-driven campaign. There are no secret donors that we know of. Trump himself appears to be the largest financial backer of the Trump campaign. A financial report disclosed that Trump lent his own campaign $1.8 million while raising just $100,000.
There's no hidden platform behind the shallow facade. With Trump, the facade is the whole deal. If old-school policy hucksters like Christie can't find a way to beat a media master like Trump at the ratings game, they will soon die out.
In a perverse way, Trump has restored a more pure democracy to this process. He's taken the Beltway thinkfluencers out of the game and turned the presidency into a pure high-school-style popularity contest conducted entirely in the media. Everything we do is a consumer choice now, from picking our shoes to an online streaming platform to a presidential nominee.
The irony, of course, is that when America finally wrested control of the political process from the backroom oligarchs, the very first place where we spent our newfound freedom and power was on the campaign of the world's most unapologetic asshole. It may not seem funny now, because it's happening to us, but centuries from this moment, people will laugh in wonder.
America is ceasing to be a nation, and turning into a giant television show. And this Republican race is our first and most brutal casting call.
The outspoken billionaire founder and CEO of Trump Corp. explained that "whether you liked him or not, all [Hussein] did was kill terrorists."
"He would kill them, like, in two seconds. And frankly, we were a lot better off with him than the situation that you have going on right now. It's a disgrace. So, we spent $2 trillion, we lost thousands and thousands of lives, not to even mention the probably millions of lives lost on the other side.
"We have absolutely nothing for it, and now they've raided us, they've taken our equipment, they're killing soldiers, they're executing everybody that's in their way."
Excerpt: "For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men. If convicted, they’ll have plenty of time to mull over their sins." War historian Martin van Creveld is the only non-U.S. author whose writings are obligatory reading by America's Officer Corps."
Fact: "Two hundred people confessed to the Linbergh kidnap-murder."
19 prisoners signed affidavits stating they saw guards beat Samuel Harrell to death; no justice
by Shaun King
Nineteen different inmates at New York's Fishkill Correctional Facility saw guards beat Samuel Harrell to death. In a painfully thorough new article by Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz of the New York Times, inmates describe a living hell on earth not just for Harrell, but for so many of his peers who are locked far away in the poorly managed prison, out of sight of both true scrutiny and compassion.
Struggling through mental illness most of his adult life, on this past April 21, for 30-year-old Samuel "J-Rock" Harrell the struggle ended in about the most horrific way it ever could. Often out of touch with reality, and five years away from his sentence ending, Harrell packed a bag and told the guards his beloved sister was there to pick him up. Of course, she wasn't, but he sincerely didn't seem to know that.
Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.
Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”
What other inmates described is unthinkable, and exposes that officials were attempting to create an alibi from the start.
“I saw the officers kicking him, jumping on his head multiple times and screaming, ‘Stop resisting,’ even though I didn’t see him moving,” wrote Mr. Pearson, who has since been released after serving two years on a weapons charge.
None of the affidavits or letters mentioned Mr. Harrell’s fighting back or speaking during the encounter. Several said that once he was on the floor, handcuffed, he stopped moving, and a few of the inmates speculated he may have already been dead by then.
He did die there.
The prison called an ambulance and made up a story stating that Harrell had overdosed on K2, an illegal drug often smuggled into prison. Except, facts matter and the autopsy showed Harrell hadn't taken any illegal drugs at all. He was beaten to death.
Like Eric Garner before him, the coroner ruled Harrell's death a homicide. In other words, he wouldn't have died on his own had guards not killed him.
Yet, in spite of it all, zero prison guards have even been suspended over this. Nobody has lost a job. Obviously, nobody has been arrested.
This may be hard to imagine, because life outside of prison walls is mighty unjust nowadays, but some of the most evil, brutal, horrific injustice in the history of our nation happens in our nation's jails and prisons.
Alan:Blacks are arrested - and prosecuted - at least twice as often as whites for the "contraband" crimes that most often put Americans behind bars.
If white people were incarcerated as often as blacks for the crimes both commit with the same regularity, and if blacks were incarcerated for the crimes they commit as often as whites are for those same crimes, the "black prison time" figure of 32% (above) would be cut in half and the "white prison time" figure of 6% would double. The situation is further complicated because it is much harder for released blacks to find work than it is for released whites, making persistent black unemployment a source of recidivism. Are there any circumstances under which you would hire Jamal ahead of James?
(CNN)If you felt the heat this past July, you are hardly alone.
July saw the highest average temperatures since record-keeping began -- globally, not just in the United States -- the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday.
Globally, the first seven months of the year also had all-time highs. The latest global temperature data make it likely that 2015 will be the hottest year on record, the agency said.
NOAA's findings follow reports by NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency, which reached the same conclusion using their own data.
10 photos:What's causing climate change? Meet the top 10 villains
Thursday's report "is reaffirming what we already know," NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch said. "The world is warming. It's continuing to warm."
Data from NOAA dates back to 1880, but it is possible that July was the hottest month in at least 4,000 years. Climate research suggests these are the hottest temperatures the Earth has seen since the Bronze Age.
The prediction for 2015 becoming the hottest year on record is based on observed temperatures so far, plus the coming El Niño event.
NOAA predicts that a strong El Niño is building, one that could rival the intensity of the record 1997 event that influenced weather-related havoc across the globe, from mudslides in California to fires in Australia.
"There is a greater than 90% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16, and around an 85% chance it will last into early spring 2016," NOAA said in a statement.
Fox News anchor, Megyn Kelly is vacationing this week, while blonde doppelgangers with names like Shannon and Martha take turns in the anchor chair. You have to give it to Fox for having a deep bench when it comes to good looking, blonde news anchors.
According to Fox News, Kelly is enjoying a long-planned summer vacation with her family. Fox felt obligated to clarify Kelly's vacation scheduling after Donald Trump spun Kelly's absence as a stint in news anchor prison.
According to The Donald, Kelly was given a time out by Fox News officials for her poor treatment of the presidential candidate during the first GOP debate in Cleveland last week.
As much as it pains me, I'm going to have to give Fox the benefit of the doubt on this one.
In case you missed the Kelly-Trump match up, it started with Ms. Kelly asking The Donald what seemed like a reasonable question. She asked him if, in light of all the horrible things he's said about women, did he think that he would have a problem with the female half of the electorate.
Trump responded by saying that he reserved those choice pejoratives for Rosie O'Donnell, unwittingly doubling down on the whole misogynistic thing.
It seems to have escaped everyone that no one defended O'Donnell. Apparently, being gay and unappealing makes her fair game. The issue, though wasn't the object of Trump's remarks, but the fact that he made them.
Trump followed that encounter with a thinly veiled inference that Kelly's monthly flow caused her to go all PMS on him. For her part, Kelly said that she thought her questions were fair and that she would not apologize for doing her job.
And that was that. She handled the whole thing with grace and aplomb and pegged the needle on my esteem meter. Too bad that was only the beginning of the show.
Kelly's first story after she put the Trump thing to bed was about the one year anniversary of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO. Commemorating the event, there were people in the streets of Ferguson, MO. Black people. Angry black people.
Blonde, beautiful Megyn Kelly did not understand what all the fuss was about. After all, as she described it, Darren Wilson, the white cop who shot and killed unarmed, black, 18-year old Michael Brown was "completely exonerated" by a federal investigation.
"Completely exonerated." She said it a couple of times and over-enunciated it like it was one of the Ten Commandments.
I don't know the difference between "completely exonerated" and "exonerated," but "exonerated" is defined as, "freed from any question of guilt; absolved from all blame."
I read most (all right, some) of the Department of Justice's report on the Michael Brown shooting and the word "exonerate" did not leap from any of the pages. What they said was, "There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson's stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety."
Pretty far from an exoneration. It's more of one guy's word against another guy's word, only one guy's dead.
Obviously, the DOJ can't disprove Darren Wilson's stated state of mind, which is the basis for his defense. The gist of the report, though is that Wilson is a symptom of the problem in Ferguson, not the disease, itself.
The essence of the report was a scathing indictment of a systematic disparity of justice in Ferguson, MO, with a racial bias heavily disfavoring the black community.
In 1995 Megyn Kelly got her J.D. (insert your own lawyer joke here) from Albany Law School, where she served as editor of the Albany Law Review. She graduated a few months before the end of O.J. Simpson's murder trial, where he was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
I doubt that if the verdict had come out while Kelly was still editing that law review, the headline would have read, "OJ Completely Exonerated."
A growing number of scientists have made the claim that climate change is at least partly responsible for California's crippling drought. Now researchers have estimated the extent to which humans are to blame: between 8% and 27%.
In other words, without heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions causing temperatures to rise, the drought would have been 8% to 27% less severe than it is, said John Abatzoglou, a University of Idaho climate researcher and coauthor of a study published Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"By knowing how much global warming has contributed to the trend in California drought conditions over the past century, we can reliably predict how the future will play out," said A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who led the study.
The prediction is not pretty. The study's forecast calls for increasing temperatures in the Golden State over the next few decades. By the 2060s, Williams said, more or less permanent drought conditions will set in, with evaporation overpowering short bursts of intense rainfall.
That means the natural climate variability that still dominates regional weather patterns will become increasingly unable to compensate for the drying effect of rising temperatures from global warming, according to the study.
Williams and his colleagues made their forecast after conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the annual variations of drought and weather conditions at 23,955 locations throughout California. In each of those seven-square-mile plots, the team assessed the precipitation, temperature, wind, humidity and solar radiation for each month over the last 120 years.
All those measurements were plugged into a computer simulation and used to determine the rate of evaporation at each site, Williams said. By comparing changes over time and modeling a range of scenarios, the team calculated that at least 8% of the drought could be attributed to global climate change. The upper limit, they found, was no more than 27%.
"If it turns out that the real contribution is closer to 8%, it means the global warming process is underway and may take a few more years before it becomes a dominant player in California drought conditions," he said. "If, however, it is closer to 27%, it means we have already reached [that] point."
The team's best guess is that the true range "is about 15% to 20% — smack dab in the middle," Williams said.
One thing the results show for sure is that the drought is not simply the result of natural processes, he said: "There are lots of people who are under the impression that this drought is entirely caused by natural climate variability. That is not the case."
Kevin Anchukaitis, a professor of geography at the University of Arizona who wasn't involved in the research, said the study was the first to quantify the degree to which human activity has contributed to the drought.
"This is the point from which future research on this issue will pivot," he said.
Over the last four years, the drought has prompted policymakers to enact severe restrictions on municipal water use and forced farmers to fallow their fields. The study results suggest these changes may be here for good.
"The current drought cannot be passed off as a fluke event very unlikely to reoccur in the near future," Williams said. "It would be therefore extremely unwise to discontinue current efforts to make necessary changes to water-use policies."
Gov. Cuomo says nude women in Times Square are breaking the law
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says women posing nearly naked for photos in Times Square are breaking the law and undermining efforts to keep the tourist area family friendly.
Cuomo said Wednesday on NY1 that the situation is beginning to remind him of the seedy days of the "bad old Times Square."
The women pose for photos with tourists in exchange for cash and often wear only body paint and a thong.
Cuomo says the activity is interfering with "legitimate" businesses.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that he believes the practice is "wrong" and that the city will take action.
The governor says he also has concerns about performers dressed as cartoon characters who harass tourists into purchasing photos.
Alan: There is something peculiar (if not twisted) about the suppression/repression of breasts in northern latitude societies.
Alan: In northern latitudes, the exhibition of breasts (and other female "sex parts") is an exercise in deliberate tantilization which pretends to nakedness but is the "last thing" from it. To aestheticize the human body through the use of calculatedly minimalist clothing reveals a crack in the occidental psyche, which, if seen for what it is, would dwarf The Grand Canyon.
A segment on HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" is putting new pressure on the IRS to crack down on televangelists, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor.
Many of these ministers preach what is called the "prosperity gospel" -- that God intended for Christians to be healthy and wealthy. Many church leaders find those beliefs heretical, but that hasn't stopped believers from donating millions every year.
According to the prosperity gospel, God lifts the faithful out of poverty and cures them of disease.
True believers prove their faith by seeding -- giving money to preachers -- which God will then reward with a bountiful harvest later on.
Televangelists reach about 5 million viewers, Trinity Foundation president Ole Anthony said. His group investigates religious fraud. He thinks people are being duped.
"They keep trying to send more money, more money, more money so they can get healed," Anthony said.
Anthony said these preachers have flourished in part because the IRS has turned a blind eye to their tax-exempt churches.
The IRS uses 14 criteria for defining a church, including having ordained ministers, a recognized creed and holding regular services. But the agency will not evaluate church doctrine as long as they are "truly and sincerely held" and "not illegal."
"A few years ago, the IRS named Scientology a church. Since that happened, anybody can call themselves a church," Anthony said.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the IRS suspended church audits completely from 2009 to 2013 and conducted just three from 2013 to 2014.
To prove a point, Oliver created his own church and registered it with the IRS. He called it "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption."
The "Last Week Tonight" clip has already been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube.
"You are always going to find abuses and excesses in the non-profit community, and even in the church world," Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erik Stanley said.
He said churches are constitutionally tax exempt because of the free exercise of religion.
"There is no surer way to destroy that free exercise of religion than to begin to tax it," Stanley said.
He said the church community does a good job of policing itself, but Anthony thinks more can be done about hucksters.
"My God, they should at least say that fraud is illegal in the name of God," Anthony said.
"CBS This Morning" reached out to the IRS for comment but the agency declined to provide any. "CBS This Morning" also reached out to the ministers mentioned by Oliver and those that appear in this story, but did not receive any responses.
Some presidential contenders have big dreams: building a solid concrete wall along our entire southern border, for example, or cutting wealthy Americans' taxes to zero percent while rebuilding our national infrastructure using only the power of rainbows.
"I’ll tell you what the unions do, unfortunately too much of the time. There’s a constant negative comment, ‘They’re going to take your benefits, they’re going to take your pay,'" Kasich said. "So if I were, not president, but if I were king in America, I would abolish all teachers' lounges, where they sit together and worry about, 'Woe is us.'"
A little small-ball, perhaps, but it does hit the essential Republican note of finding some lowest-rung public worker and blaming their poor attitude as the reason why none of your previous policy promises have worked out.
In context, Kasich was explaining at a New Hampshire education summit that too many teachers think people like John Kasich are going to cut their pay and take their benefits and bust their unions, just because people like John Kasich keep proposing and then doing exactly that. Not so, says John Kasich, and if he were in charge he would make damn sure teachers couldn't assemble in one place to spread such negativity.
The Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store and gun range has had a string of ugly incidents after declaring they are "Muslim free":
“We do not want to have any jihadis training on our gun range and then going down to our local armed services office and having better marksmanship than they showed up with,” said Neal, an Iraq War veteran. “I’ve seen what Muslims and jihadis do to people. It’s just not going to happen in my store.”
Several residents of tiny Oktaha, Oklahoma (population 390) have turned out to stand in front of the store and guard it with loaded weapons. Yesterday, one of these men accidentally shot himself while "on guard":
A Checotah man shot himself in the wrist while "defending" a survival gear store and shooting range in Oktaha, said Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson.
Terrence Veninga, 57, was volunteering Tuesday morning as an armed guard with several other self-described patriots at the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store and gun range, a self-professed Muslim-free store.
His gun, an old Colt .45 revolver, fell from its bucket holster and discharged. The bullet hit him in the wrist, Pearson said. Veninga was guarding the store because of alleged threats against it, Pearson said.
Complicating matters even more for the "patriots," a U.S. war veteran, who is also a practicing Muslim, showed up to challenge their policy:
“They just said, ‘This is private property. You are not allowed here,’” Martin explained.
Martin said that once the men learned he was a veteran, they said he was allowed on the gun range.
“They’re saying now it’s just [banning] someone who’s an extremist or terrorist,” Martin said.
Martin drove from California to confront the owners after he heard of their sign. He said he hopes his showing up sparks conversation on discrimination.
So, in one short day, one of the men shot himself and they were forced to back down from the policy after a veteran showed up to challenge it. You have to imagine this isn't quite going down the way they'd hoped.
Former U.S. Marshal and DEA Agent Matthew Fogg has been speaking out against police brutality and racism and the drug war since he left law enforcement. The freethoughtprojectbreaks down part of an interview he did with Brave New Films. In it he discusses succinctly and with the clarity of a diamond one of the basic fundamental problems with how law enforcement policy works—and more specifically, policy around the war on drugs.
“We were jumping on guys in the middle of the night, all of that. Swooping down on folks all across the country, using these sorts of attack tactics that we went out on, that you would use in Vietnam, or some kind of war-torn zone. All of the stuff that we were doing, just calling it the war on drugs. And there wasn’t very many black guys in my position.
So when I would go into the war room, where we were setting up all of our drug and gun and addiction task force determining what cities we were going to hit, I would notice that most of the time it always appeared to be urban areas.
That’s when I asked the question, well, don’t they sell drugs out in Potomac and Springfield, and places like that? Maybe you all think they don’t, but statistics show they use more drugs out in those areas than anywhere. The special agent in charge, he says ‘You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up; somebody’s going to jerk our chain.’ He said, ‘they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.'”
What Fogg realized was that without the racial component, without the class component, there is no War on Drugs. Middle-class white people would not stand for the kind of abuses that were and are being routinely inflicted upon more urban areas.
You can watch part of Matthew Fogg's interview:
Alan:Blacks are arrested - and prosecuted - at least twice as often as whites for the "contraband" crimes that most often put Americans behind bars.
If white people were incarcerated as often as blacks for the crimes both commit with the same regularity, and if blacks were incarcerated for the crimes they commit as often as whites are for those same crimes, the "black prison time" figure of 32% (above) would be cut in half and the "white prison time" figure of 6% would double. The situation is further complicated because it is much harder for released blacks to find work than it is for released whites, making persistent black unemployment a source of recidivism. Are there any circumstances under which you would hire Jamal ahead of James?
“The Vietnam War, I think, was an unnecessary war; the invasion of Iraq was an unnecessary war… We need to be more reluctant to go to war." - Jimmy Carter (Former U.S. President, Peacemaker, and Humanitarian)
In 2013, journalist Mayumi Yoshinari with the Japanese literary magazine, Chuo-Koron,conducted an interview with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The extensive interviewtook place in Dublin, Ireland during a meeting of The Elders. Also included in the piece are some interesting and perhaps not well-known facts about Mr. Carter. Here are a few:
During his ten-year service in the US Navy as an engineer and officer, Carter attended graduate school, majoring in reactor technology and nuclear physics.
In 1952, he risked his life to dismantle a nuclear reactor when he was ordered to lead the clean up of a nuclear accident caused by melted fuel rods at Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories.
As US President from 1976 to 1980, Carter established an energy policy that cut US oil imports by half. (Reagan dismantled most of Carter's policies.)
Aside from the eight people who were killed during a hostage rescue missionduring the Iranian Revolution, no American or any other national was killed under the banner of an American war.
Considering that millions of people lost their lives in the wars before and after Carter’s presidency – the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan – the fact that the Carter administration did not wage war on any country makes it unique in American history.
The piece by Chou-Koron covers topics which WikiLeaks, the Middle East, North Korea, Democracy, Religion, and the president's last three days in office dealing with the Iranian Hostage Crisis. I hope some of Carter's words below inspire many to read the full interview. It's a long fascinating read. Here are just a few excerpts:
Chuo-Koron: Should we avoid war at any cost? Or should we be prepared to fight when there is a danger of losing national sovereignty?
Mr. Carter: Well, my prominent career was in the US Navy as a submarine officer. I was prepared to give my life if necessary – if my country went to war. But I felt that to have a strong defence and a willingness to use it if necessary was the best prohibition or obstacle to go into war.
And so I think that it’s been one of the mistakes that the American government has made since the Second World War – that we have been involved almost constantly in military conflicts, most recently, obviously, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and earlier than that in Bosnia. I could name fifteen different places where we’ve been in armed conflict. Japan has not; China has not; Brazil has not; and so forth. But the US stays in military conflict or the threat of that.
So I believe that in almost every case, the wars have been avoidable without betraying the basic moral principles and privileges and well-being of the countries involved. I think we’ve had unnecessary wars. The Vietnam War, I think, was an unnecessary war; the invasion of Iraq was an unnecessary war; and so forth. So I think that we need to be more reluctant to go to war, and to go there only in desperate conditions when all avenues towards peace are exhausted, including good-faith discussions, either directly with our potential adversaries or through a trusted intermediary.
Alan: Out of the blue, retired Air Force general friend AC said to me: "It seems we haven't fought a good war since World War II.
Chuo-Koron: It is often said: “The first casualty of war is truth.” (Hiram Warren Johnson) In the US, when we listen to news about a war, we know every American – to the last person – who died in the war. Yet, we don’t know how many were killed on the other side. Sometimes, the death toll may reach more than 100,000, and we still do not know about it. Don’t you think that there a lack of imagination here – an inability to acknowledge that the other side consists of human beings with equal human value and equally valuable stories to tell?
Mr. Carter: Yes. We dehumanise the people against whom we are fighting. We call all the Japanese “Japs”, we call the Germans “Huns”, we call the Italians “Wops”. And you know what we called the Vietnamese when we were at war with them: “Gook”, “Charlie”, etc. We tend to convince ourselves and to convince our fellow citizens that the people against whom we are fighting are no longer human – they’re not equal to us. This is contrary to basic moral principles. It’s contrary to my own religious beliefs. But it’s certainly something that lets us rationalise what we do.
Chuo-Koron: I’ve always wanted to ask.
President Reagan and Vice President George Bush, at the time, secretly negotiated with Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the release of the Iranian hostages for 72 days to prevent your re-election. When did you find that out?
Mr. Carter: [Large smile] I never have been willing to comment about that.
Well, I spent the last three days and nights as President… I never went to bed. I was negotiating all the details with Ayatollah Khomeini on how the hostages should be released. I had confiscated twelve billion dollars of Iranian money that I was holding. At ten o’clock in the morning, when I was going out of office at noon, all the hostages were in an aeroplane ready to take off. But Ayatollah didn’t let it take off until five minutes after twelve o’clock when I was no longer President.
But I would say that when I learned from the Secret Service who came and whispered in my ear “the plane has taken off,” it was one of the happiest days – the happiest moments – of my life, to know that my hostages were free.
In 1982, President Carter and his former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, founded the Carter Center, dedicated to advancing peace and health worldwide. The Carters still live in a simple one-storey house built in 1961. An activist at 90, Carter has authored 28 books, including anew book in 2014 called, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.
Last week, on August 12th, President Carter announced he was fighting liver cancer thatrequired treatment. Today, the president held a press conference stating the cancer has spread to other parts of his body. Here is the full press conference video. Our thoughts/prayers are with Mr. Carter and his family during this time of challenge. President Barack Obama added, “Jimmy, you’re as resilient as they come, and along with the rest of America, we are rooting for you.” The rest of America and many around the world. I feel so fortunate to be able to witness the incredible actions of this great leader, peacemaker, and humanitarian. Thank you, President Jimmy Carter.
The above is roughly what 8.5 Trillion dollars would look like... and those are $100 bills. Take another look and let that sink in for a bit... I find it absolutely astonishing that the pentagon could lose track of this much money and for there to be no MSM coverage of this scandalous amount of mismanagement and fraud. Where is the demand for accountability? Why is the first question to ANY candidate for president not "What would you do about the massive fraud and waste at the Pentagon?" Where are the hearings, nay indictments, that are warranted when a sum equal to 1/2 of our national debt can be sent to the pentagon to never be accounted for.
We progressives need to work this scandal into every political conversation we engage in, especially when we talk to conservatives. Cutting government spending and accountability aresupposed to be core GOP values.
Combine "Known" Pentagon waste (like the 1.5 Trillion dollar F35) with missing pentagon money and you have a good chunk of our entire national debt represented.
"What's that? Body cameras for all cops will be too expensive? How bout we find 1/10,000th of the money we sent to the pentagon."
"Oh really? There's 500 million in provable food stamp fraud going to poor people how bout the 8.5 TRILLION the pentagon can't account for?"
"Oh really? You think Obama care is going to cost us almost a trillion dollars over 15 years? How about the 8.5 Trillion that just disappeared into the ether at the pentagon? What's you're take on that?"
"Oh really, you're concerned about deficit spending and the debt? Fully 1/3 of the national debt it is money we sent the Pentagon and they can't tell us where it went. It's just gone."
"College for everyone will cost too much? You must be really pissed at the 8.5 Trillion, with a 't', dollars the pentagon's spent and can't tell us where it went."
Bringing up this "open secret" exposes their hypocrisy, and draws attention to the lack of corporate media attention to this HUGE SCANDALOUS level of waste by the Military/Industrial/Media (<-should be new addition to the lexicon) complex ownership of government. It seems for few hundred million in "be all you can be" ad buys the MSM will keep it's mouth shut. We need to press so called journalists to bring this issue front and center. No candidate should be allowed to talk about government waste or big government with out being asked the follow up "What would you do about the massive 8.5 Trillion dollars the pentagon can't account for?"
In short; nothing reinforces our position that the money for valuable social and infrastructure programs (that have provable returns on investment) is actually there than this scandal. We need to harp on this until we get some answers and we need to leverage it more to shut down debate about desperately needed social program spending. Money visualization grabbed from this site you should check it out HEREhttp://demonocracy.info/...
Tue Aug 18, 2015 at 9:19 PM PT: Here's an additional point : 8.5 Trillion dollars represents about $70,000 from each of the 123 Million US households.
1:00 AM PT: Updated this diary as the totals were misinterpreted although the crux is the same. Also of note is this is scandalous because the Pentagon has been required by law to be "audit ready" since 1996, but still has no real accounting systems.
Alan: My reason for digging "Duggar dirt" is not to gloat.
However, if there is anything like a "last judgment" (as customarily conceived) we will all be "thrown on the mercy of the court."
As the ancient Roman Terence noted, "nothing human is alien to me" ("Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto") and so I offer no resistance to signing a comprehensive confession for my repeated violation of The Ten Commandments, as well as the sins of commission and omission that relate to my embarrassingly consistent failures to "love enemies" and to "forgive my offender 70 times 7 times."
I believe it is likely that the "transition of death" will oblige "squeaky clean" Christians -- and other "goody two shoes" -- to confront the self-righteousness that caused them to condemn gays, fornicators, drunkards and n'er-do-wells --- especially those in their own families.
The world is a mucky place: none of us get through it undefiled unless we count "selling our soul" to the highest ecclesiastical bidder as a "pure passage" rather than the subtle quintessence of spiritual filth. One wonders what percentage of "The Saved!" -- if only they could stop lockstep cheerleading and "preaching to the choir" -- would issue a "confession" very much like Josh Duggar's.
Statement from Josh Duggar:
I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have been unfaithful to my wife.
I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.
I have brought hurt and a reproach to my family, close friends and the fans of our show with my actions.
The last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal failures.
As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences. I deeply regret all the hurt I have caused so many by being such a bad example.
I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Please pray for my precious wife Anna and our family during this time.
Josh Duggar
Duggar Family Source on Josh's Sex Scandal: 'It's Insane' and 'We're All Hunkered Down'
BY MICHELLE TAUBER
Josh Duggar had already been living in relative seclusion with his family before his latest scandal imploded his world even further.
The disgraced 27-year-old father of four left Washington, D.C., for his home state of Arkansas with his wife Anna, 27, and their children after a 2006 police report surfaced in mid-May that revealed that Josh had been accused of molesting five underage girls as a teen.
Since then, his parents Jim Bob and Michelle – who have repeatedly and emphatically said that they forgave him following the first scandal – have wrestled with how to continue to support him even as his presence drew negative attention to the family.
RELATED VIDEO: Josh Duggar Admits to Being 'Unfaithful' to His Wife
Now, in the wake of Josh's confession that he cheated on Anna and had an addiction to pornography, the 19 Kids and Counting parents stated that they only learned of the news "late last night" and that their "hearts were broken."
Privately, a Duggar family insider tells PEOPLE: "We're all hunkered down over here. It's just a mess, it's a whole mess. We don't even know what the truth is anymore. It's insane."
A second source with ties to the family says the cheating scandal is a devastating blow to the Duggars' firstborn, who resigned from his post at a right-wing Christian lobbying group in May.
"I would assume he feels like his life is ruined," says the source. "It will be such a steep and practically impossible climb to come back from this."
In this week's PEOPLE cover story, a source who worked closely with the family says that in the wake of the molestation scandal, Jim Bob and Michelle recognized that anytime they were seen publicly with Josh, "a story gets made out of it that rehashes the whole mess. ... Maintaining some distance is as much for his own good as it is for theirs."
Now, with Josh's confession to his "own personal failings," the source with ties to the family says, "It's like he's a completely different person from who they thought he was. They're still trying to reconcile all that they know is good about Josh, whom they will always love and adore, with what they've learned now."
• With reporting by JANINE RAYFORD RUBENSTEIN
RELATED VIDEO: Why the Duggars Are Shocked over How Much Josh's Scandal Has Cost Them
Alan: My reason for digging "Duggar dirt" is not to gloat. If there is anything like a "last judgement" everyone will be "thrown on the mercy of the court." As the ancient Roman poet Terence noted, "nothing human is alien to me.""Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto." And so I am ready to sign complete confession for routine violation of The Ten Commandments plus the sins of commission-and-omission relating to my embarrassingly consistent failure to "love enemies,""to treat the least human being as if s/he were Christ himself and "to forgive my offenders 70 times 7 times."
I believe it likely that the "transition of death" will oblige "squeaky clean" Christians -- and other holier-than-thou "goody two shoes" -- to confront the self-righteousness that caused them to condemn gays, fornicators, drunkards and n'er-do-wells --- especially those in their own families.
The world is a mucky place, None of us run the race undefiled... unless we count "selling our soul" to the highest ecclesiastical bidder a "pure passage" rather than a cowardly form of spiritual filth. One wonders what percentage of "The Saved!" -- if only they could stop lockstep cheerleading and compulsive "preaching to the choir" -- would issue a "confession" very much like Josh Duggar's.
Statement from Josh Duggar:
I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have been unfaithful to my wife.
I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.
I have brought hurt and a reproach to my family, close friends and the fans of our show with my actions.
The last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal failures.
As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences. I deeply regret all the hurt I have caused so many by being such a bad example.
I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Please pray for my precious wife Anna and our family during this time.
Josh Duggar
Duggar Family Source on Josh's Sex Scandal: 'It's Insane' and 'We're All Hunkered Down'
BY MICHELLE TAUBER
Josh Duggar had already been living in relative seclusion with his family before his latest scandal imploded his world even further.
The disgraced 27-year-old father of four left Washington, D.C., for his home state of Arkansas with his wife Anna, 27, and their children after a 2006 police report surfaced in mid-May that revealed that Josh had been accused of molesting five underage girls as a teen.
Since then, his parents Jim Bob and Michelle – who have repeatedly and emphatically said that they forgave him following the first scandal – have wrestled with how to continue to support him even as his presence drew negative attention to the family.
RELATED VIDEO: Josh Duggar Admits to Being 'Unfaithful' to His Wife
Now, in the wake of Josh's confession that he cheated on Anna and had an addiction to pornography, the 19 Kids and Counting parents stated that they only learned of the news "late last night" and that their "hearts were broken."
Privately, a Duggar family insider tells PEOPLE: "We're all hunkered down over here. It's just a mess, it's a whole mess. We don't even know what the truth is anymore. It's insane."
A second source with ties to the family says the cheating scandal is a devastating blow to the Duggars' firstborn, who resigned from his post at a right-wing Christian lobbying group in May.
"I would assume he feels like his life is ruined," says the source. "It will be such a steep and practically impossible climb to come back from this."
In this week's PEOPLE cover story, a source who worked closely with the family says that in the wake of the molestation scandal, Jim Bob and Michelle recognized that anytime they were seen publicly with Josh, "a story gets made out of it that rehashes the whole mess. ... Maintaining some distance is as much for his own good as it is for theirs."
Now, with Josh's confession to his "own personal failings," the source with ties to the family says, "It's like he's a completely different person from who they thought he was. They're still trying to reconcile all that they know is good about Josh, whom they will always love and adore, with what they've learned now."
• With reporting by JANINE RAYFORD RUBENSTEIN
RELATED VIDEO: Why the Duggars Are Shocked over How Much Josh's Scandal Has Cost Them
Former reality TV star Josh Duggar has admitted to cheating on his wife amid reports that he had subscribed to the Ashley Madison affair website which was hacked earlier this week. (Reuters)
A day after Gawker alleged in a report that Josh Duggar had paid for an account on the infidelity site Ashley Madison, Duggar — the oldest child of the family famous for the now-canceled TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” — said in a statement posted to the family website that he has “been the biggest hypocrite ever.”
“While espousing faith and family values, I have been unfaithful to my wife,” the statement said. “I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.”
An earlier version of the statement, which appeared then disappeared from the family’s Web site on Thursday afternoon, added: “I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction.” That line was not included in the later statement, posted shortly after a public relations firm that works with the family confirmed to The Washington Post that a Duggars statement was forthcoming.
Neither Josh Duggar nor his parents specifically mentioned Ashley Madison in their statements.
In May, Josh Duggar apologized and resigned from his job at the conservative lobbying firm Family Research Council after it emerged that he had molested multiple young girls as a teenager, including some of his own siblings. The Duggar family later confirmed the reports in an interview with Fox News.
Anna Duggar, Josh’s wife, give birth to the couple’s fourth child a month ago. The family moved from Washington D.C. back to the family’s home state of Arkansas after Josh resigned from his job.
The Duggar family’s home life was documented for years on their popular TLC reality show, where the family presented themselves as ambassadors for their Christian beliefs. Although many evangelicals consider the Duggars’s beliefs to fall outside of their mainstream, the Duggars were popular for their wholesome TV presence.
On their show, the Duggars demonstrated their belief that marriage should come after a traditional courtship period, as opposed to dating. The four oldest Duggar women — Jill, Jinger, Jessa and Janna — published a courtship guide last year. The book contains a passage from Josh and Anna, where Josh discusses “wrong thoughts” he had as a teenager.
The Duggars have also hit the campaign trail in the past for a number of conservative politicians, including Mike Huckabee, Ken Cuccinelli, and Todd Akin.
Duggar’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, wrote in a short statement that “when we learned of this late last night our hearts were broken. As we continue to place our trust in God we ask for your prayers for Josh, Anna, our grandchildren and our entire family.”
Gawker’s report — and the statements from the Duggars — came after a team of hackers published what it claimed was a massive trove of user data from the spouse-cheating site, including names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and credit card fragments of users.
While Ashley Madison has not confirmed that the information is authentic, several security researchers have already said that it appears to be.
Here’s the full statement from Josh Duggar:
Statement from Josh Duggar:
I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have been unfaithful to my wife.
I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.
I have brought hurt and a reproach to my family, close friends and the fans of our show with my actions.
The last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal failures.
As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences. I deeply regret all the hurt I have caused so many by being such a bad example.
I humbly ask for your forgiveness. Please pray for my precious wife Anna and our family during this time.
