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Memorial Day 2014
In honor of Memorial Day, MaddowBlog will likely be pretty quiet today, but will be back to normal tomorrow.
In the meantime, though, there was some unexpected holiday-related news yesterday, when President Obama made a previously unannounced trip to Afghanistan to visit with U.S. troops.
"I thank you as your Commander-in-Chief because you inspire me," Obama said. "Your willingness to serve, to step forward at a time of war, and say 'send me,' is the reason the United States stays strong and free. Of all the honors that I have serving as president, nothing matches serving as your Commander-in-Chief."
Conspicuous in its absence was Afghan President Hamid Karzai from the president's schedule -- the two did not meet in person despite Obama being in the country.
White House officials later said the two spoke by phone for 15 to 20 minutes before Obama left the country.
Of course, Karzai won't be the Afghan leader much longer, with Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani poised to face off in a June 14 primary, and with Karzai leaving office soon after. For the U.S. administration, this offers a new, separate opportunity to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement that's proven elusive.
"Once Afghanistan has sworn in its new president, I'm hopeful we will sign a bilateral security agreement that lets us move forward," Obama said yesterday.
The surprise trip came against the backdrop of a controversy surrounding veterans' care though the VA, which the president referenced in his remarks:
Shooting rampage leaves seven dead in Southern California
The closer one looks at the circumstances surrounding the latest American mass shooting, the more gut-wrenching it appears.
A college student who posted videos that documented his rage against women for rejecting him killed six people and wounded 13 others during a spasm of terror on Friday night, the police said. He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot the others as he methodically opened fire on bystanders on the crowded streets of this small town.The gunman, identified by the police as Elliot O. Rodger, 22, was found dead with a bullet wound to his head after his black BMW crashed into a parked car following two shootouts with sheriff's deputies near the University of California, Santa Barbara. The police said he had apparently taken his own life.
After most shooting rampages, it's common for the public to wonder what the gunman might have been thinking, as we look for some kind of rationale to explain a tragedy of this magnitude.
But in this case, such questions have already been answered: Rodger hated women, a fact he made abundantly clear in a series of YouTube videos, one of which he recorded a day before the shooting spree and which has since been taken down. In it, Rodger elaborates on his plan to seek "retribution against humanity."
"I do not know why you girls aren't attracted to me," he said, "But I will punish you all for it."
Rodger also appears to have published a 106,000-word manifesto of sorts, detailing his intentions and motivations. In it, he describes himself as "the true victim."
Though media accounts vary slightly, the gunman reportedly had three semiautomatic handguns and more than 400 rounds of ammunition, all of which was purchased legally, at the time of the slaying.
This Week in God, 5.24.14
First up from the God Machine this week is a new edition at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which as Eric Lach reported, will unveil a world-class Allosaurus skeleton today.
[U]nlike other museums, where dinosaur skeletons are used to "indoctrinate our kids with belief in evolution," according to the institution, the Creation Museum's skeleton will serve as "a testament to the truths found in God's Word.""While evolutionists use dinosaurs more than anything to promote their worldview, especially to young students, our museum uses dinosaurs to help tell the account of history according to the Bible," Ken Ham, president and founder of the Creation Museum and its parent organization, Answers in Genesis, said in a statement. "This remarkable allosaur is a great addition to our dinosaur exhibits. It's been a pleasure to work with the Peroutka Foundation, which wants to use this great fossil in a God-honoring way."
Around the world, real scholars working in legitimate institutions would unveil well-preserved dinosaur skeletons as a scientific breakthrough in fields such as geology, archeology, and biology. But at the Creation Museum, today's unveiling of an Allosaurus -- complete with a skull featuring 53 teeth -- is perceived as evidence of creationism.
Indeed, someone who works with Answers in Genesis insisted the skeleton "is a testimony to an extremely rapid burial, which is confirmation of the global catastrophe of a Flood a few thousand years ago."
In the world of actual science, the Allosaurus lived in the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago.
When it comes to the bizarre political dispute over science, creationists have often resisted the fossil record, with some suggesting dinosaur bones are satanic tricks intended to test evangelicals' belief system. Now it appears at least some creationists have reached the opposite conclusion, not only embracing dinosaur skeletons but even adapting their worldview to say the bones fit into their young-earth creationist model.
Also from the God Machine this week:
In tonight's 9 p.m. hour...
Tonight, msnbc presents a rebroadcast of the documentary special hosted by Rachel Maddow, "Why We Did It," a look at the real motivations that drove the United States to war in Iraq.
After the jump, Rachel talks with the Daily Show's Jon Stewart about the documentary...
A wee-hour meteor shower
If you're an East Coast insomniac or a late-night partier in another U.S. timezone, have I got a celestial treat for you! Tonight at approximately 3:20am EDT, the Earth will pass through the "debris trail" of Comet 209P/LINEAR (discovered in 2004) resulting in a meteor shower with up to 400 meteors an hour at its peak.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, you can think of comets as something akin to a dirty snowball. As they approach the inner Solar System, they get heated by the Sun and they start to sublimate, often leaving gas and dust particles in their wake -- like Pig Pen. These particles continue to orbit the Sun along the comet's path, just at speeds much slower than the comet itself, to the point where sometimes they are strewn out across millions of miles along the comet's orbit. If Earth's orbit and the comet's orbit intersect, the dust particles enter our atmosphere as meteors, a.k.a. shooting stars, and we call it a meteor shower.
The meteor shower tonight is exciting for several reasons:
Friday's Mini-Report, 5.23.14
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Guantanamo: "A Federal District Court judge late Thursday lifted an order that had barred the military from force-feeding a hunger-striking Guantanamo detainee, and sharply rebuked the Obama administration for refusing to compromise over procedures she said caused 'agony.'"
* Coup consequences: "The U.S. has suspended $3.5 million in aid to Thailand following a military coup earlier this week, the State Department said Friday. The Obama administration is also reviewing the remaining $7 million in assistance it provides annually to Thailand, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday."
* Ukraine: "[A]n anti-Russia Ukrainian militia has killed one of the pro-Russia separatists who've been fighting the Ukrainian government in the country's east."
* It's official: "Julian Castro ... is now ascending to the cabinet level. President Obama on Friday nominated the San Antonio mayor to take over as the next secretary of Housing and Urban Development. If confirmed by the Senate, Castro will replace Shaun Donovan, who was chosen to head the White House Office of Management and Budget."
* Sterling: "Clippers owner Donald Sterling's desire for his wife, Shelly, to negotiate the forced sale of the franchise would only proceed if the NBA allowed her to 'retain some ownership,' a Sterling confidant said Friday."
* Grimm: "The House Ethics Committee voted to form a subcommittee to investigate Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) after he was indicted on 20 criminal charges last month. However, it also recommended that the panel defer any action at the request of the Justice Department."
* Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki published a message to veterans on the VA's blog late yesterday, vowing to delivering "the high quality benefits you have earned and deserve."
McConnell sees distinction between ACA, ACA exchanges
Senate hopefuls Michelle Nunn (D-Ga.) and Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-Ky.) have taken some heat this week, some of it deserved, for less-than-clear answers on the Affordable Care Act. Both are broadly supportive of reform and have endorsed key provisions, but both have been reluctant to say to how they would have voted if they'd been in the Senate when "Obamacare" was up for a vote.
The question obviously won't go away and they'll need clear answers, sooner rather than later.
But while scrutiny like this is fair, it's important that campaign watchers not miss the other side of the coin: some Dems may be hedging on some health care questions, but in a variety of races, the Republican line is a complete mess.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell says he would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he's elected Senate majority leader.But the veteran senator won't say what would happen to the 421,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the state's health care exchange.McConnell told reporters Friday that the fate of the state exchange is unconnected to the federal health care law. Yet the exchange would not exist, if not for the law that created it.
This AP report doesn't include any exact quotes, and I'm reluctant to draw sweeping conclusions from paraphrases. I'll be interested in McConnell's exact words.
But if the AP's rough account is accurate, the Senate Minority Leader's position is plainly incoherent. It's simply not possible to separate the law's exchange marketplaces from the law itself. Like it or not, one is a key part of the other. The federal law was responsible for creating and funding the existence of the state exchange. When consumers -- in Kentucky and elsewhere -- use these marketplaces to sign up for private coverage, many are able to afford the insurance thanks to subsidies made possible by the federal law Republicans have been desperate to obliterate.
Or put another way, when McConnell says he wants to destroy the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, "root and branch," he necessarily means eliminating the marketplaces where insurers compete for consumers' business -- it's one of the "branches."
So why suggest otherwise?
Who'll control the Internet's tubes?
When the issue is net neutrality, congressional Republicans say they're afraid of the federal government having control over the future of the Internet. When the issue is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), those same GOP lawmakers say they're afraid of the federal government losing control over the future of the Internet.
The House voted Thursday to delay the Obama administration's plans to relinquish the United States' oversight of fundamental Internet functions.In a 245-177 vote -- including 17 Democrats -- the House approved a Republican amendment that would halt the administration's plans to end its contract with the company that coordinates Internet addresses.... [Rep. John Shimkus' (R-Ill.)] amendment would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study before the Commerce Department can proceed with its plans to hand off its oversight role of the system.
As political debates go, this one's been lurking in the background the last few months, with complaints largely limited to conservative circles. Fox News helped get the ball rolling in March -- viewers were told that rascally President Obama chose unilaterally to "give away" the Internet -- but it's been percolating ever since. (Republican support for the measure yesterday was unanimous.)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned supporters, "Every American should worry about Obama giving up control of the Internet to an undefined group. This is very, very dangerous." Senate Republicans appear eager to follow in the House's lead, with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), among others, warning that we may be "putting ourselves in a situation where censorship-laden governments like China or Russia could take a firm hold on the Internet itself."
A veteran of the Bush/Cheney administration, who apparently wasn't kidding, compared the move to Carter and the Panama Canal.
There's an interesting story here, but the whining and fear-mongering is wildly unnecessary.
Jindal vs. Jindal
It's a genuine shame to see what Republican officials hoping to impress the party's far-right base are willing to do.
Stepping up his criticism, Gov. Bobby Jindal on Wednesday compared Common Core to centralized planning in Russia and predicted the national drive to overhaul academic standards will fail."The feds are taking over and rushing this," Jindal said in a prepared statement released late Wednesday."Let's face it: centralized planning didn't work in Russia, it's not working with our health care system and it won't work in education," the governor said. "Education is best left to local control."
Yep, Common Core reminds Louisiana's Republican governor of Soviet-style communism.
Naturally, after listening to Jindal, one can only wonder what kind of left-wing loon would ever endorse such a radical federal takeover as Common Core.
Oh wait, Jindal used to support Common Core.
Friday's Campaign Round-Up, 5.23.14
Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* When the National Republican Senatorial Committee reported its fundraising totals for April, the campaign arm apparently inflated the actual total by $2.6 million. Republicans claimed to raise $21.9 million, when in fact it was $19.2 million.
* Las Vegas and Cincinnati are now out as finalists to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, leaving just four cities in contention: Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Kansas City. Up until fairly recently, Las Vegas had been considered the favorite.
* Gov. Jerry Brown (D) looks very strong in the new Public Policy Institute of California poll, leading his closest challenger by 33 points.
* Senate Majority PAC is launching a new ad in New Hampshire, going after former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) for recently lobbying against a bipartisan energy-efficiency bill. "Scott Brown lobbied Republican leaders to kill the bill," the ad's narrator says, "hurting Shaheen and helping himself gain another Senate seat."
* Just how unpopular is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)? In Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall's (D-Colo.) campaign is launching a new offensive against Rep. Cory Gardner (R), asking whether the Republican congressman supports "McConnell's prideful legacy of grinding Washington to a halt."
Netanyahu backs Obama on Syria
Ask President Obama's critics why they disapprove of his foreign policy and their first response tends to be, "Syria."
Last fall, the administration walked right up to the military-strike line, but chose not to cross it when an international agreement came together to rid the Assad regime of its chemical weapons -- an outcome the White House saw as far preferable to missile strikes, anyway.
Obama's detractors still see it as evidence of a fiasco. Assad crossed a "red line" drawn by the president, the argument goes, and did not pay a price. (From the administration's perspective, of course, Syria did pay a price in the form of lost chemical weapons stockpiles.)
Unexpectedly, Jeffrey Goldberg reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is siding with Obama on this one.
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has some uncharacteristically positive words for one of U.S. President Barack Obama's most controversial foreign policy initiatives: the deal struck last year to remove chemical weapons from Syria. [...]During the course of our discussion, I asked him about the famous "red line" crisis -- Obama's last-minute decision to abort a missile strike and instead negotiate the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile -- that colors so much of foreign-policy commentary today. Netanyahu issued what was for him a full-throated endorsement of an Obama initiative, calling it "the one ray of light in a very dark region.""It's not complete yet," he went on. "We are concerned that they may not have declared all of their capacity. But what has been removed has been removed. We're talking about 90 percent. We appreciate the effort that has been made and the results that have been achieved."
Goldberg added that when it comes to Obama reaching an international agreement, the U.S. president "actually gets more credit for the deal in Israel -- particularly among leaders of the country's national-security apparatus -- than he often does in Washington."
Which in turn leads to an interesting question for Republican opponents of the White House.
Obama: 'The problem in Congress is very specific'
In these contentious, divisive times, Americans may not agree on much, but if approval ratings are any indication, there's something approaching a consensus about Congress and policymaking in Washington: it's broken.
The contention may be rooted in fact, but it is incomplete. At a fundraising event last night, President Obama went further than usual in shining a light on basic structural truths that challenge widely held assumptions.
"[T]he truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don't think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you're not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing. [...]"[T]he problem ... is not that the Democrats are overly ideological -- because the truth of the matter is, is that the Democrats in Congress have consistently been willing to compromise and reach out to the other side. There are no radical proposals coming out from the left."
The substance of this is hard to deny. The president argued, accurately, that on the major issues of the day, Democrats deliberately pursued moderate solutions to pressing problems. On immigration, Obama's proposal enjoys bipartisan support and is similar to what Bush/Cheney recommended. On climate, Democrats could have adopted a command-and-control model, but Obama instead endorsed a cap-and-trade plan comparable to what McCain/Palin proposed.
On taxes, Democrats have pushed for modest reforms that would leave tax rates broadly lower than when Reagan was in office. Even on health care, the Affordable Care Act is a centrist solution built on Mitt Romney's model. It led the president to add:
"So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it's not true. What's broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people."
To be sure, hearing the president specifically call out "false equivalence" is sure to make some Beltway pundits uncomfortable.
Christie 'was hoping to ride a boom that never happened'
It's hard to imagine how much worse 2014 can get for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Clearly, "Bridgegate" and the related scandals have taken a severe toll on the governor, his credibility, and his national standing. His poor job-creation record made matters worse. The fact that New Jersey's debt has been downgraded six times, in part due to Christie's decision to ignore warnings about unreliable budget projections, added insult to injury.
But the Star-Ledger's Tom Moran argues that this week, the bottom fell out. State pension reform, the "landmark achievement" of the governor's first term in office, is no more.
[Christie] did only the easy part. He made public workers pay more for skimpier benefits, and froze cost-of-living adjustments for current retirees. That tough medicine was justified to deal with the emergency.But the other half of the deal was just as important. For his part, Christie promised to ramp up state payments into the pension funds gradually, over seven years, to make up for the scofflaw governors in both parties who shorted these funds over two decades.The point is that both sides had to absorb their share of pain. Public workers did their part. Now Christie is saying he will not do his, that he will short the funds by a whopping $2.4 billion through next year.
Moran added that Christie "had no plan," was "hoping to ride a boom that never happened," and "has no idea how he'll spin this mess."
West questions Duckworth's 'loyalties'
As a rule, it's generally best to take Allen West about as seriously as one might take Sarah Palin. They both had fairly brief careers in elected office*; they're both foolish caricatures; and they both tend to say deliberately ridiculous things as part of a sad attempt at attention.
But once in a great while, West crosses a line of decency that's more difficult to ignore. Yesterday offered just such an example.
Fox News contributor Allen West questioned the "loyalties" of decorated veteran and Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth for serving with her fellow Democrats on the Benghazi select committee.West attacked the recently announced Democratic members of the newly formed committee for dismissing the importance of Benghazi during an appearance on the May 21 broadcast of The Janet Mefferd Show.West remarked of Duckworth: "I just don't know where her loyalties lie. You know, for her to have been a veteran, a wounded warrior for the United States Army, she should know that this is not the right thing."
In this case, "the right thing" is serving on a select committee, created by House Republicans, to investigate the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
Even by Allen West standards, this is incoherent. The right-wing Floridian wanted Congress to launch yet another investigation, but he thinks Duckworth is wrong to cooperate with the GOP-led probe?
More to the point, though, questioning Tammy Duckworth's "loyalties" is simply beyond the pale.
GOP poised to let Steve King win
In the debate over immigration reform, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) plays a unique role. The right-wing Iowan has positioned himself as the fiercest, highest profile, most knee-jerk-anti-immigrant opponent of reform proposals in Congress.
It was King who made the notorious "calves the size of cantaloupes" remarks last summer; it was King who compared immigrants to dogs; and it was King who recently said of immigrants who might gain citizenship through military service, "We have a bus for you to Tijuana."
Recognizing the damage the Republican lawmaker is doing, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly called King an "a**hole" earlier this year.
The larger question, though, is whether Boehner, whatever he might personally think of the Iowa lawmaker, is prepared to let King prevail in the fight over immigration policy. Greg Sargent reported yesterday that King appeared on the House floor yesterday to boast: his position is his party's position.
King cited Chuck Schumer's recent claim that the Congressman from Iowa is an "extreme outlier" on the issue. King then helpfully pointed out that in fact, his position is indistinguishable from the Republican Party position, while deriding the Democratic position as akin to socialism.In an important sense, King is absolutely right in suggesting that his posture on this issue is perfectly at home in today's GOP. While most House Republicans don't share King's outsized views of immigrants ... for all practical purposes, the position of many Republicans right now is that the only acceptable policy response to the immigration crisis is maximum deportations from the interior.
Greg added that, at least for now, "the GOP remains Steve King's party."
What, pray tell, do Republicans intend to do about it?