Daily Kos

There's not enough war in the deal President Obama negotiated on Iran for Dick Cheney. In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Cheney was his usual charming, fearmongering self.

Not since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago has the world been closer to the use of nuclear weapons, former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. And when Iran winds up with nuclear weapons, Cheney said, it will compel others in the region to work toward getting their own.

As for the nuclear deal with Iran, Cheney called it "a lie" on the part of President Barack Obama to claimed that the accord would stop further nuclear proliferation.

"What Obama has done, has in effect sanctioned, the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn't make any difference. It's a matter of months until we're going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability," Cheney said. "And that will, in fact, I think put us to closer to use—actual use of nuclear weapons than we've been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II."

You have to give him this—if anyone knows about presidentially lying when it comes to matters of war and peace, it's Dick Cheney. He was the architect of the biggest war lies this country has ever seen, a series of lies that took us into an unnecessary, long, bloody, morally and financially bankrupting war in Iraq. Notice as well how Cheney is able to skip over the long years of nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis which he most definitely lived through and should have been interested in, since he was in college at the time and was studying foreign policy. Maybe all that that just slipped his mind.

Here's a fun part, too. Cheney tells Hannity, "When we took down Saddam Hussein in '03, Qaddafi gave up his nuclear materials and that let us wrap up [Pakistani nuclear scientist] A.Q. Khan." You might remember the name A.Q. Khan, and the Bush/Cheney administration's probable role in spiking an investigation "that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya." And don't forget that Valerie Plame Wilson was also investigating A.Q. Khan as an undercover agent for the CIA. While she was undercover. Before Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, outed her. But, yeah, Cheney and Bush "wrapped up" A.Q. Khan.

The last person who should be taken seriously on this, or really any, issue is Dick Cheney. But as long as there's a Fox News and a Sean Hannity, he'll have a megaphone.

Donald Trump has filed his Personal Financial Disclosure Statement with the Federal Election Commission, as all presidential hopefuls are required to do. Or so he says in the press release, and yes: Donald Trump can even make filing a financial disclosure statement sound pompous.

For Immediate Release:

(New York, NY) July 15, 2015 - Today, Donald J. Trump filed his Personal Financial Disclosure (PFD) forms with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

This report was not designed for a man of Mr. Trump's massive wealth. For instance, they have boxes once a certain number is reached that simply state $50 million or more. Many of these boxes have been checked. As an example, if a building owned by Mr. Trump is worth $1.5 billion, the box checked is "$50,000,000 or more."

Mr. Trump stated, "First people said I would never run, and I did. Then, they said, I would never file my statement of candidacy with the FEC, and I did. Next, they said I would never file my personal financial disclosure forms. I filed them early despite the fact that I am allowed two 45 days extensions. Now I have surged in the polls and am fighting to Make America Great Again. I look forward to the challenge of winning the presidency and doing a fantastic job for our country. I will make the United States rich and strong and respected again, but also a country with a 'big heart' toward the care of our people."

Mr. Trump's net worth has increased since the more than one year old financial statement produced at his presidential announcement. Real estate values in New York City, San Francisco, Miami and many other places where he owns property have gone up considerably during this period of time. His debt is a very small percentage of value, and at very low interest rates. As of this date, Mr. Trump's net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS.

They used the all caps there, not me.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by David Nir Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, "moderate" Republican, running for re-election in a blue state in a presidential year, has utterly lost his shit:

Under the Bob Corker legislation that recently passed, Congress can do a resolution of disapproval and the president can veto it. The only reason why the president supported the Corker legislation is because it allows him to get what he wants on Iran, which is to get nukes to Iran.

That's from a brand-new interview with Boston's WRKO and shared by Buzzfeed. But this wasn't just one blurry throwaway line that Kirk can try to excuse away by claiming he misspoke. Oh no. The entire discussion focused on the Iran deal, which Kirk histrionically freaked over as two fawning hosts, enraptured by Kirk's previous service as a military intelligence officer, challenged exactly zero of his lunatic assertions.

Like, say, going full Godwin:

This is the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

He is doing this because of his very poor understanding of history and what happened to Neville Chamberlain. And Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler, but the key lesson of the 1930s is that appeasement leads directly to war.

What will that war look like? Head below the fold to find out that—and much, much more!

• Today's comic by Matt Bors is Feminist Legion of Doom vs. Bill Cosby:
  
• Former Auschwitz guard, 94, sentenced to four years for 300,000 counts of accessory to murder. Pat Buchanan must be fuming:

  Oskar Groening confessed during his trial to feeling "moral guilt" for serving as an SS sergeant at Auschwitz. On Wednesday, a court ruled that he was guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews and sentenced him to four years in prison.

  The 94-year-old, who testified that he oversaw the collection of prisoners' belongings and ensured valuables and cash were separated to be sent to Berlin, listened expressionlessly to the verdict after a 2 1/2-month trial that could set a legal landmark. [...]

  "This verdict was critical, because this is the first case brought where the prosecution charged a person who wasn't involved in the physical side of mass murder," said the Simon Wiesenthal Center's head Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, in a telephone interview from Belgrade.

• APA fires three senior officials over colluding on torture:

  As the American Psychological Association copes with the damage reaped by an independent investigation that found it complicit in US torture, the group announced on Tuesday that its chief executive officer, its deputy CEO and its communications chief are no longer with the APA.

  All three were implicated in the 542-page report issued this month by former federal prosecutor David Hoffman, who concluded that APA leaders “colluded” with the US department of defense and aided the CIA in loosening professional ethics and other guidelines to permit psychologist participation in torture.

• These Daily Kos community posts were the most shared on Facebook July 14:
  

  This WILL win the internet today. I guarantee it., by Giles Goat Boy

  The Pope Hits a Triple, by Bob Thurman

  Trump outsources stock photo of American soldiers...to Nazi-era Germany., by Brainwrap

• Tom Petty says using the Confederate flag on tour was "stupid."
  
• Diehard deniers claim new study means mini-ice age could strike in 2030:

  If you look closely at the original press release, the study’s author, Valentina Zharkova, never implied a new ice age is imminent—only that we may see a sharp downturn in the number of sunspots. Yes, the sun is a variable star, but its output is remarkably stable. The amount of energy we receive from the sun just doesn’t change fast enough to cause a rapid-onset ice age in just a few decades.

• A look at how two Florida police agencies built a money-laundering machine:

  Three years after the task force ended, confidential records show officers withdrew hundreds of thousands in cash with no records to show where the money went.

  “They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The Donald has achieved something pretty spectacular—a net unfavorable rating among Latinos of 68 points, according the new Washington Post/ABC News poll. To put that in perspective, Trump also has spectacularly high net unfavorable ratings among the general public, and that only sits at 28 points (meaning 33 percent view him favorably while 61 percent view him unfavorably).

But among Latinos, The Donald has really outdone himself: with just 13 percent viewing him favorably while 81 percent view him unfavorably. (Frankly, I'm a little worried about that 13 percent, but that's for another post.)

Trump, however, is not persuaded. Peering into his crystal ball during a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he promised once again to win the Latino vote:

“The Hispanics love me,” Trump said, adding that he would open up more jobs for everyone in the economy.

That's right, "THE Hispanics." It's truly a testament to the power of delusion—something the GOP has specialized in for years. But The Donald is just so next level.

Over-the-top outrage is the emotion of the day for Republicans as they respond to the latest misleading, heavily edited video attacking Planned Parenthood. The video shows Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, talking about voluntary fetal tissue donation and the reimbursements for the costs of doing that. It's being depicted as some lurid plot to sell bodies, but really it's ... organ donation. You know, like you can register to donate your own organs when you renew your driver's license?

But it's abortion, so rather than "women who choose abortion, as is their right and none of my business, then have the right to choose to donate fetal tissue," here's what Republicans are saying:

“When an organization monetizes an unborn child — and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video — we must all act,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. “As a start, I have asked our relevant committees to look into this matter. I am also calling on President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”

I'd venture a guess that all organ and tissue donation is gruesome, but it didn't stop Dick Cheney from getting a heart transplant and I'm betting if he needs one, it won't stop John Boehner from getting a liver transplant. For that matter, medicine is gruesome, full stop. And heavily monetized—much more heavily than reimbursement for the costs of tissue donation.

“I am sickened by the complete disregard for innocent unborn life evident at Planned Parenthood. I’m proud that one of my first actions in the Senate was voting to defund this organization,” Marco Rubio told POLITICO.

Translation: I hate Planned Parenthood and oppose women's reproductive rights as I always have. Nothing has changed.

Ted Cruz released a statement calling the video “sickening” and urged Congress to begin an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress’ allegations.

“There is no place for taxpayer funding of organizations that profit from taking away innocent life, much less profiting off the bodies of the lives they have stolen,” Cruz said. “It should renew efforts to fully defund Planned Parenthood to ensure that its morally bankrupt business receives not one penny of taxpayer money.”

Yes, we must prevent this morally bankrupt business from providing birth control, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and cancer screenings—you know, the things Planned Parenthood does with government funding. All this outrage is as dishonest as the edited video that prompted it. It's just a new news hook to hang the same old claims on.

President Obama will hold a press conference about the nuclear agreement with Iran. We'll liveblog it here.

10:04 AM PT: For background on the deal, see this post from Meteor Blades, who also has a good takedown of Republican talking points on the deal.

10:19 AM PT: No, you haven't missed anything yet. It still hasn't started.

10:26 AM PT: And we start. "Yesterday was an historic day," the President start. "It shows what we can accomplish when we lead from a position of strength...." He's already reached out to congressional leadership, expects a "robust" debate.

See the rest of the liveblog below the fold.

Nobody could possibly have foreseen when Republicans set up a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack after all the previous investigations failed to yield a politically satisfactory result that it would turn into a partisan fishing expedition trying to hurt Hillary Clinton.

Oh, wait. Everyone paying even a little attention could foresee that. And so it has developed. The committee's Democrats have sent its Republican chair, Rep. Trey Gowdy, a memo pointing out in detail how blatant the focus on Clinton, and the slow-walking to carry the investigation into 2016, has been:

At the beginning of this year, Select Committee Republicans provided Democrats with detailed information about their plans to hold 11 hearings between January and October on a wide range of topics relating to the Benghazi attacks. Since then, however, Republicans have completely abandoned this plan — holding no hearings at all since January and instead focusing on former Secretary Hillary Clinton. Amazingly, the last eight press releases on the Select Committee's webpage deal entirely with Secretary Clinton.

The letter lists 11 hearings planned for 2015, nine of them planned for January through July—but can point to only one hearing that has been held so far this year. "In the entire 14 months since the Select Committee has been in existence," the letter damningly notes, it "has not conducted a single transcribed interview or deposition of even a single Defense Department employee," and it waited until April to request new documents from the CIA.

In the past, Republicans have attempted to blame the Select Committee’s glacial pace on Secretary Clinton and the State Department. But it seems difficult to understand how they could be responsible for the Select Committee abandoning every single hearing it had planned to hold since January.

Difficult to understand if you're not a Republican, maybe. Republicans know that Hillary Clinton is responsible for everything bad in the world, including their own failures to request documents, hold hearings, and interview people. And they're determined to go through whatever contortions necessary to make Benghazi a major issue in the 2016 election. It worked so well for them in 2012, after all.

Donald Trump is—he will tell you straight out—a very smart man. Which means his thought process here is probably just going over my head. In an interview on Morning Joe:

Asked about Tuesday’s announcement of a nuclear agreement with Iran, Trump said “it’s a ridiculous deal” and “a disgrace.” The United States, he said, “should have doubled up the sanctions.”

“Well, they didn’t read The Art of the Deal. Most people did; they didn’t,” he said. “I have seen the deal. I’ve seen it broken down in every newspaper you can imagine, and I think I know the deal quite well,” he added, when pressed about whether he had read the deal himself.

Side note: Most people?!? As in a majority of the adults in the United States? The Art of the Deal sold tens of millions of copies? Why do references to its sales record not reflect that? But I digress. In the same interview, Trump discussed his feelings about the media:

One thing he has learned is “how dishonest … some of the political media” is, in contrast to the financial journalists with whom he normally interacts.

“They don’t want to print the truth. They don’t want to say what you said. They don’t want to say what you mean. They know what you said, they know what you mean, and they put it in totally different words. It’s like you didn’t say it, it’s incredible to me,” Trump said, noting that he has become “more careful” in dealing with some people in the media as a result.

So the media doesn't want to print the truth, but he knows all about the Iran deal because he read about it in the newspaper, which is part of the media.

Also, what kind of magic does he think the media is working on the televised interviews and speeches in which we can all see him saying the same things the media says he says? It would take some truly top-notch misleading editing to have created video of Trump saying all the things he's been shown in the media saying if he didn't really say them. Instead, I think we have a case of a rich guy thinking he should be able to say whatever he wants without facing any consequences for it, ever, and blaming everyone but himself when people notice that he's a creep.

Here we go again.

A pro-life advocacy group has released a hidden camera video that they purport shows a high-ranking Planned Parenthood executive frankly discussing the sale of aborted fetus parts.

The Center for Medical Progress launched a three-year investigation of the practice by hiring actors to pretend to be buyers from a human biologics company. The new video supposedly features undercover actors have a conversation with Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services Deborah Nucatola at a restaurant about the possibly of obtaining aborted fetus organs.

Planned Parenthood released a statement blasting the "heavily edited, secretly recorded videotape that falsely portrays Planned Parenthood's participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research." Which is all very much true. Snopes points out that "[i]t's unclear why the video was held for over a year before it was released, and it has some curious aspects to it." That includes the fact that the "organization's Twitter and Facebook accounts are both only a few months old, and the only videos found on the group's YouTube page are the two shown above, even though the organization has supposedly been engaged in a three-year long investigation." Snopes also reports that the "leader" of CMP is a guy named David Daleiden, who doesn't have much of a web presence but who conservative pariah Chuck Johnson described as a friend of James O'Keefe, the king of "undercover" exposes using heavily edited footage. Of course.

The full transcript of the video, which was released by CMP, clearly shows Nucatola explaining how patients are not coerced but are informed about the option of donating tissue and also making it very clear that there is not a profit motive for Planned Parenthood. She clearly says Planned Parenthood "affiliates are not looking to make money by doing this. They're looking to serve their patients. […]" The statement issued by Planned Parenthood clarifies that affiliates can be reimbursed for "additional expenses related [to] tissue donation, which can vary based on individual circumstance," but that money does not go to staff or doctors.

But the dubious nature of this story hasn't stopped Republican presidential hopefuls from jumping on the story. "Libertarian" Rand Paul (whose definition of liberty stops dead at lady parts) says "[i]t's time for pro-lifers to take a stand. It's time to defund Planned Parenthood." Ted Cruz is demanding a congressional investigation. Rick Perry touts his long fight to defund Planned Parenthood in Texas, Scott Walker jumps on the defund bandwagon and Carly Fiorina spouts about "profiting on the death of the unborn" on Facebook. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered an investigation, even though there's no indication that Louisiana had anything to do with anything. However, the "investigation means the $4 million Planned Parenthood clinic planned for New Orleans will not be able to open because Jindal's order includes suspending the issuance of new licenses by DHH." How convenient for a would-be Republican presidential nominee who needs to stand out from the rest with the social conservatives.

Donald Trump's rise continues, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. Apparently vicious anti-immigrant rhetoric will do wonderful things for your favorable ratings from Republicans:

Nearly six in 10 -- 57 percent -- Republicans now have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 40 percent who have an unfavorable one. That marks a complete reversal from a late-May Post-ABC poll, in which 65 percent of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably.

But while Trump's favorable ratings have even climbed slightly among Democrats and liberals (though remaining below 20 percent with both groups), it's not all sunshine and roses:

Hispanics represent one group where Trump's image, perhaps understandably, has soured since his negative comments about Mexican illegal immigrants. Trump's unfavorable ratings among Hispanics rose sharply from 60 percent in May to 81 percent now. His favorable ratings are 13 percent among Hispanics, little changed from the previous survey.

Let's all look back at where Trump said he was going to win the Latino vote and point and laugh, shall we?

But this is another moment to remember when the Republican establishment tries to separate itself from Trump's hatred of Latino immigrants: A lot of Republican voters ate that shit up.

Reposted from Comics by Barbara Morrill