April, 2015 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 2

The Inevitability Of Hillary

April 13, 2015 by Bitchy

I posted this stupid piece yesterday with a long commentary, but the piece is so stupid that I have more to say. The offensively stupid piece is titled, There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face. So at this point I’m already a little irritated because of the condescending tone, but I thought that maybe the writer had something substantive, thoughtful, and new to say.

Nope. He starts off by listing the ages of four Supreme Court justices. Cause the "you’re voting for the supreme court" point is on that has never been made before. Genius! Oh, wait. Yawn.

The next point he makes in mounting this great case for Hillary, is that he points out that Elizabeth Warren isn’t running. He actually tells us this three times. When you’re making a case for why people should show up to vote for the candidate your piece is about, perhaps pointing out that the candidate many people really want isn’t going to run isn’t the best way to start. Your opening salvo is, "your first choice isn’t running, so get yourself used to the idea of settling for what you’re going to get." Weak. Seriously, that’s so weak. If you’re going to write a piece outlining why people need to turn out for Hillary, perhaps you should make a case for Hillary.

He never makes a case for Hillary. Not once in the whole condescending piece in which he lectures everyone who isn’t bright enough to have thought of his hackneyed points before. He lists precisely no accomplishments and no qualifications.

But the most galling part of this ridiculous piece, is that he’s talking to liberals who have assessed Hillary to be too far right for us. In other words, he’s talking down to people who have been paying attention. I find this notion that liberals (real liberals, for whom Hillary isn’t all that) are going to stay home and let republicans take the white house, completely ludicrous. We’re not stupid. If we were stupid, we would be excited by Hillary and rooting for her to raise every penny of that 2.5 billion dollars she’s aiming for, cause how could that possibly not be awesome for us? I mean, it’s not like the corporations and banks giving her the money don’t have the interests of the middle class and poor on the forefront of their minds, right? I mean, Monsanto and Goldman Sachs obviously want her elected so that she can finish what Occupy Wall Street started, don’t they?

We’re not stupid, and we’re going to hold our noses when the time comes. But until that time comes, we’re going to push her left. Why? Cause we’re smarter than the buffoon who lectured me in this stupid piece of his. Did anyone actually watch Rahm Emanuel’s campaign after he failed to fend off Chuy Garcia’s primary challenge? Here. watch Jon Stewart show you;

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes, More Daily Show Videos, Comedy Central Full Episodes

Has anyone ever seen Rahm as humble as he was in those campaign commercials? You know why that happened? Cause we didn’t accept the inevitable, went for a progressive, and made a statement.

The writer of this piece thinks it’s smarter, and more forward thinking to just suck it up. We know better because we just saw it. We know better because neither Elizabeth Warren nor Bill de Blasio should be serving as senator and mayor (respectively) right now. The liberals this author he’s talking to are more sophisticated than the average voter. We don’t need lectures on short term strategy to motivate us to do what needs to be done and accept that which must be accepted, when it needs to be accepted.

In fact, some of us are so politically sophisticated, that we’ve really thought this through and concluded that even huge supporters of Hillary Clinton should be very concerned about what’s going on here. The coronation it looks like we’re about to have should make no one happy.

What’s happening in the democratic primary process is all that is wrong with Citizen’s United. Republicans have always had their coronations. It was always going to be McCain in 2008 because he was next in line (and owed after what Bush did to him in 2000). It was always going to be Romney in 2012 because the corporate overlords had already picked him four years earlier. The next republican in line always gets the nomination, but at least they put on a show with primary opponents. They still invest the time in building the theater and putting on a show for republican voters.

Democrats just leapfrogged to the next inevitable phase of post Citizen’s United elections. They’re not going to bother with a primary, and idiots like the guy who wrote that piece are telling us to just embrace the new coronation process. I mean honestly, no thinking person can be happy with this.

Let’s get into what else this writer failed to think forward about: the vice president. Primaries are how VP candidates are vetted and chosen. We’re going to have none of that. No vetting of a candidate, and no strengthening of the ticket by adding the primary opponent that can help carry a few more states. I’m not worried about Hillary, since she’s the most vetted candidate in the history of vetting. But who is her VP going to be, and how is this person going to be chosen? We’re supposed to just suck it up and trust that Hillary is wisely going to choose the person who is ostensibly going to be the democratic heir to the White House? What if she misses something in her vetting process and her pick gets chewed up and thrown out by republicans over something in their past that she missed?

This whole thing stinks and everyone, regardless of their views on Hillary should agree with me.

But enduring these ridiculous articles that assume that the not-happy-with-Hillary-crowd aren’t happy with her cause we’re dolts is ridiculous. We’re not overjoyed because we’re the opposite of dolts. We pay more attention than most.

There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

North Charleston PD: Another Ferguson?

April 10, 2015April 10, 2015 by Bitchy

Just like with Ferguson, we’re starting to see some systemic issues with North Charleston PD. We’re also learning that the racial makeup of the police force doesn’t much resemble the racial makeup of the community.

Let’s start with demographics and city data:

49% of North Charleston residents are black
39% of North Charleston residents are white
11% of North Charleston residents are Hispanic
The estimated median household income is $38,258, compared to $43,107 in South Carolina
The median house or condo value in North Charleston is 122,300 compared to $135, 500

So North Charleston is the poor part of town, just like Ferguson. The racial demographics in North Charleston PD are even more lopsided than they are in Ferguson, where 67% of the police are white. In N Charleston PD, 80% of the police are white. So N Charleston PD is worse than Ferguson is, in terms of hiring police officers that look like and come from the community they’re charged with policing. Let that sink in for a minute.

Now on to Michael Slager, the cop who murdered Walter Scott. Just like that piece of crap, Daniel Pantaleo who murdered Eric Garner, Slanger has a previous complaint against him. Pantaleo had three, two of which taxpayers of NYC paid settlements on (the third one is still going through the system). That number of course, does not include Eric Garner.

The previous complaint against Slanger was filed in 2013, has yet to go to court. Here’s what happened in that incident. Slanger and his partner showed up at the home where Mario Givens was living with his mother and brother at 4 am one morning in September 2013. Mario Givens answered the door. According to Givens, Slanger demanded to be let inside the house, but never gave a reason for what he was looking for or what he was doing there at all. Slanger then pushed the door and told Givens that if he didn’t come outside, he (Slanger) was going to tase him (seems like Slanger loves him some hot taser action). Givens complied because he didn’t want to be tased. Slanger tased him in the stomach anyway.

It turns out that they were there because a woman named Maleah Kiara Brown called the police to report that Mario’s brother, Matthew (her ex boyfriend) had shown up in her bedroom uninvited. She gave the police a description of Matthew, where she stated that Matthew is 5 foot 5 inches tall. Mario is over 6 feet tall. Slanger and his partner didn’t just have a description, they had Maleah and her friend with them when they pounded on the Givens’ door. She corroborates Marios story entirely. Right after Slanger tased Mario and pulled him out of the house and onto the porch, Maleah claims that she was yelling at the officers, telling them that they had the wrong man. Here’s what else she said,

"He [Slanger] was cocky. It looked like he wanted to hurt him [Mario]. There was no need to tase him. No reason. He was no threat – and we told him he had the wrong man."

There were other neighbors who witnessed the incident and corroborated Mario’s story. You won’t be surprised to learn that Slanger’s version of events don’t much resemble anyone else’s. From a HuffPo story about the incident:

Slager wrote that he could not see one of Givens’ hands and feared he might be holding a weapon. He wrote that he observed sweat on Givens’ shirt, which he perceived as evidence that he could have run from Brown’s home, and then ordered him to exit several times.

When Givens didn’t comply, Slager said he entered the home to prevent him from fleeing and was then forced to use his stun gun when Givens struggled with him. The officers’ report describes the Givens brothers as looking "just alike."

To be clear, no one else supports Sanger’s claim that Givens was struggling or resisting in any way. So an internal investigation ensued. Naturally, when there are several witnesses agreeing on one version of events and a cop telling another story, the cop should clearly be exonerated. Did I forget to mention that the investigation was conducted without contacting any of the witnesses?

I mentioned that Slanger and a partner knocked on the Givens’ door in that last incident. That partner’s name is Clarence Habersham. You should be familiar with that name by now, but you aren’t because of the systemic problems in this police department that I mentioned earlier. You should know his name because he’s the same partner who was present for the murder of Walter Scott. You should know his name because he’s the second cop you see in the video when Slanger comes back with the taser and plants it next to Scott. If the video was too fast for you to spot that, don’t worry. ABC news was kind enough to publish still frames of the video to help us see what happened.

Here’s the planting-of-the-taser frame:

We can safely assume that Clarence Habersham’s statement about the incident supported Slanger’s since the department originally spewed all that bullshit about Scott going for the taser, and that he ended up dying despite the attempts at CPR. You know, all that stuff that we categorically didn’t see in the video. Yet we haven’t heard a peep about any disciplinary action taken against Habersham. Well that’s weird. It almost seems like the department took the bare minimum action they could, in firing Slanger after the video came out.

The fact that Habersham hasn’t been sanctioned in any way is an indication of a major systemic problem with this police department, just like there is with Ferguson. And just like Ferguson, I promise you that we’re going to be hearing more incidents of corruption, police brutality, and inaction to correct problems within the department.

I just hope that the Department Of Justice goes into North Charleston PD just like they did in Ferguson.

Another Cop Wins Another Epic Battle

April 9, 2015 by Bitchy

So we had an ever elusive incident of a cop being charged with murder, for murdering a person who was unarmed. I literally can’t remember the last time this happened so I was stunned by disbelief for a couple of days. You know the story by now. The murdering cop, Michael Slager killed Walter Scott during an incident that started with a traffic stop for a broken tail light.

The incident happened on Saturday, and unfolded in the usual way. The cop claims that he was in an epic battle for his life and had no choice but to shoot to kill. It’s fascinating how many epic battles cops get into. They seem to emerge victorious the in the vast majority of these incidents. Weird.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a total of 127 cops were killed in the line of duty last year. I don’t have numbers from any other source from last year, but I can tell you that they had the highest number of cops killed for 2013. In other words, no other source had a higher number than they did. So 127 is the maximum number of cops who were killed in the line of duty last year. Of those, 50 were death by gun. So let’s assume that all 50 were of the epic battle nature. I don’t have the 2014 numbers on how many justifiable homicides by cop from the FBI, but I have the 2013 figures. The FBI recorded 461 justifiable homicides committed by cops. These must nearly all have been of the epic battle variety since they were justified, right?

That 50 to 461 ratio is unfathomably imbalanced. It simply defies explanation. We don’t know how many of those 461 were unarmed, and that’s by design. No one is counting. Speaking of counting, that 461 number seems to be off by at least a factor of 2. Some think that the number of people killed by cops is closer to 1,100 per year. You know how anal I am about data, and presenting credible data but I can’t in this case. I don’t know how many of the estimated 1,100 cop killings were of unarmed victims. But I know that it would have to be no more than 5% in order to create parity with the number of cops killed in the line of duty.

If you go back to that FBI link, you’ll see that the police are justifiably murdering more people every year, while the murders of police officers are trending downward every year. There’s something seriously wrong here.

I’m not prone to believe the account of the lone survivor in a struggle, particularly when the one who died wasn’t armed. I’m not prone to believe a cop who won an epic battle for his or her life against someone who wasn’t armed. I’m not inclined to believe any cop whose story includes the word "waistband". I’m sorry, but I have no benefit of the doubt left for them anymore. Especially when they all seem to be telling virtually the same story.

Unfortunately, forensics in the real world is nothing like CSI. It never tells us exactly what happened. Darren Wilson’s story was very similar to Slager’s story. The victim reached for the cop’s weapon…..epic struggle….shoot to kill. In the Michael Brown case, forensics told us that Brown did have contact with Wilson’s gun, but it can’t tell us the circumstances. Was the gun being pulled out when he instinctively grabbed at it before it was aimed at him? We don’t know. We know that all of the bullets except one entered Michael Brown’s body from the front. What about the one we’re not sure of? That was one that went through his raised arm, which could have come in from either the back or the front. We know that Wilson missed half of the shots he took. Were these the shots he fired when they were both running? That would seem to be the most likely circumstances under which to miss, but we don’t know.

But Wilson gets a pass because we don’t know, and he’s the only one left alive to tell a story. The Michael Slager situation was on course to play out the same way as Wilson’s. He told basically the same story, and his department was standing behind it. This autopsy is going to have the benefit of a video tape showing it what happened, but there’s no telling how murky the results would have been without the tape. Based on that horribly imbalanced ratio of shootings, I think it’s safe to assume that the results were going to be too unclear to put a murderer in prison.

The only good thing that happened here, is that the video didn’t come to light until after the murderer told his lies. He’s going to have an impossible time explaining the disparity between his version and the video.

I am not prone to believe any cop’s story that isn’t accompanied by video evidence. You think I’m biased? We’re doing exactly the opposite now. We believe everything the surviving cop says unless there’s a video to prove otherwise. That benefit of the doubt given to the cops is unfounded. My bias comes from the data. Where does the reverse bias come from?

Journalism By Way Of Comedian

April 8, 2015 by Bitchy

Anyone who is paying attention knows that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are far more informative than cable or network news. We have several polls and studies to prove it. I think it’s funny that they’re perceived as partisan liberals. They may be liberals, but they’re not partisan. They’re comedians, so neither of them has ever left a joke on the table because of loyalty to democrats. They’re perceived as partisan because republicans are batshit crazy, and therefore more funny. Democrats are not batshit crazy. They’re also not quite as corrupt as republicans (yet). So when Colbert said that "the facts have a well known liberal bias", he was being earnest.

Picking on republicans more isn’t partisanship. It’s sentience. The funny thing is that Jon Stewart, who owns both Daily Show and Colbert never set out to change the world. He never had an agenda, and never intended to play a partisan role in politics. In fact, he actively worked at staying in his comedian lane until he took the path of media watch dog.

I think Colbert is more inclined to use his influence to affect change. That whole thing he did with his PAC was genius. But by and large, Colbert also stayed in his comedian lane. Oh, except for that one time when he said everything that I’ve always wanted to say to George W Bush at the Correspondent’s Dinner. That was awesome. That was also (I’m not kidding) the first time republicans realized he wasn’t one of them.

Here comes John Oliver. He really does seem intent on changing the world. From dropping millions of people on the FCC to going after big tobacco, it’s clear that he doesn’t plan on just being funny. He’s an activist.

I felt that on Sunday, he went even beyond activist and became a journalist. He did an interview with Edward Snowden. Everyone is talking about the ‘dick pic’ part of the interview, where Oliver figured out that the only way to get Americans to give a shit about their privacy, was to frame the issue around their dick and said dick’s privacy. That was hysterical and clever, but that wasn’t the part of the interview that struck me.

The part that I found fascinating (and awesome) was the ten minutes that preceded the dick pic bit. The interview starts at about the 15:00 mark;

At the 19:40 minute mark, Oliver starts to ask Snowden some seriously tough questions. He asks Snowden if he’s read all the documents before he turned them over to the press. Snowden replied by saying, "I have evaluated all the documents that are in the archive". Oliver comes back with, "You’ve read every single one?" Snowden replies with, "Well, I do understand what I’ve turned over." And then Oliver shoots back with, "There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading the documents." And then he punches Snowden hard with a sarcastic, "Right cause when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you want to do is read them."

This interview was outstanding, and it was conducted by a comedian. I’m going to let you watch it because it gets even better from where I left off in relaying it to you.

To be clear, my position is that Edward Snowden is an American hero. He is a patriot who did what true patriots do; tried to make the country better by exposing something the government was doing in total secrecy.

That said, John Oliver is the first person to ever hold his (Snowden’s) feet to the fire on how he did what he did. He held Snowden accountable for a New York Times fuck up (watch the interview) in improperly redacting something that was actually harmful to national security. I loved that. I loved watching Snowden consider his own culpability for the unintended consequences of his actions.

Why did I love that? Because I’m a supporter of Snowden and what he did, and watching him being challenged helps me to reassess my support with more information. I am so sick to death of the stenography that happens in our "news". When a journalist actually challenges a politician on something they said, that’s the news. Everyone was talking about how George Stephanopoulos challenged Mike Pence over his hateful attempt at legalizing discrimination. It’s like everyone wanted to give Stephanopoulos a cookie for doing his job.

Our media sucks at this, and some of them are proud of the poop they sling every day. Chuck Todd proclaimed that it’s not his job to correct falsehoods. He also said that if he challenges guests on his show, they won’t come back. I have news for you Chuckie; you’re an overpaid stenographer, and if you can’t do an entertaining and informative show without having guests on, you’re a shitty broadcaster with no talent. Remember when Lara Logan was outraged that Michael Hastings committed the crime of journalism by reporting on what he saw when he was embedded with General McChrystal? When she told me she was a hack, I believed her so when her entirely unbelievable Benghazi propaganda piece came out in 60 Minutes, I wasn’t at all surprised.

Since we clearly can’t have journalists that do journalism in America, I hope we get more political comedian-journalists. Here, watch everyone on freaking Morning Joe, completely in awe of Oliver’s journalism. No really, click on that link and watch it.

Yeah, that happened totally unironically.

Here’s the thing about John Oliver – he’s also a flaming liberal who doesn’t do his job through a partisan lens. When a right wing hackneyed douchebag like Scarborough heaps praise on Oliver, that’s proof that you can be strongly politically oriented without being a partisan hack.

Media Matters is a partisan website. That doesn’t mean they’re not reputable and that they lie. Lying means they lie and unless you can prove that a media outlet lies, you can’t dismiss them because they’re partisan. Fox News lies. It’s the lies that make them unreliable, not the partisanship. Wanna know how I know they lie? Cause Media Matters and Right Wing Watch post videos of them lying every day. The fact that I don’t like Fox doesn’t make them liars. The fact that I can demonstrate they lie, makes them liars. "Partisan" does not mean "unreliable.

I’m going to side track for a minute. You know that whole, "liberal media" crap we’ve been hearing about for twenty years? Well that was all started by Roger Ailes whose head exploded over the coverage of the civil rights movement and MLK in the 60s. He was pissed off that the media aired events like the brutal beatings on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday. In Ailes’ twisted and bigoted mind, showing America what segregation and bigotry looked like was liberal. Reporting on the endless and pointlessness that was going on in Vietnam was liberal. Never mind the fact that it was endless and pointless. Never mind the fact that discrimination is abhorrent. Both of those "liberal" positions were the correct positions morally and historically. But they were liberal, and Ailes didn’t agree with either position. And that’s when the words "liberal media" were foisted on America for the purpose of making journalists afraid of presenting the facts. Facts don’t have two sides. They’re facts. Evolution and creationism are not two sides of an issue. One is science, and the other is purely faith. There is no "side" there. There are no "sides" to the issue of climate change. 99% of scientists are telling us what they’ve found, and Exxon has a handful of "scientists" they’ve paid to say that it’s all a fiction. Those are not two equally valid and compelling "sides". So now we have a media who creates false equivalencies so as not to seem like they’re too liberal when they’re on the right sides of issues like showing you what happened in Selma. But I digress.

John Oliver is the best journalist we’ve seen since Walter Cronkite. I say that as someone who wants to see my heroes challenged. How the fuck else am I supposed to know if they’re worthy of my respect if no one ever challenges them? Anyone who uses the phrase, "gotcha question" needs to stop talking. Seriously, shut up and stop talking now. There’s no such thing as a gotcha question, since there’s an easy way to avoid them; don’t get got. And if you’re a lemming who doesn’t want to see your government officials "gotchaed", I urge you to stop spending time on politics. Perhaps sports is more your speed?

You should want your position challenged as often as it can be. You should learn to address someone who opposes you directly with facts and citations to the facts you base your opinion on. You shouldn’t talk past people. Someone brings up a point, you should address that point before introducing one you like better. That’s how you form sound opinions; by testing your beliefs. Now that journalists aren’t doing that, we’ve all forgotten how legitimate disagreement and debate is done. Don’t point somewhere else in order to distract from something someone said. Address it head on. If you can’t do that, you need to reassess your position.

I’m hoping that John Oliver will bring back the antiquated notion of critically looking at issues. I’m hoping that more comedians take his lead and fill the void left by our media.

Rand Paul 2016

April 7, 2015 by Bitchy

Rand Paul has officially stepped into the republican primary clown car. Believe it or not, I think he’s the most viable candidate among those who have already announced or have made it clear they’re running.

He’s come a long way in his efforts to learn how not to sound like an idiot. I don’t think he’s said anything idiotic in the past (at least) six months. I think he’s going to appeal to millenials with republican parents since they’re predisposed to veer right. His father’s libertarian schtick will appeal to young white men (libertarians are 96% white and 68% men) who aren’t interested in more wars, but love the myth that more freedom will allow the free market to solve all the problems in the world.

I say his father’s schtick because Rand appears to literally have no mind of his own. There is not a single policy position he believes in that didn’t come directly from daddy. I’m always suspicious of people who entirely agree with a parent. It demonstrates a lack of independent thought and in the case of the Paul’s, also critical thinking. My father and I were not politically in agreement in a damned thing. He was an immigrant, blue collar Reagan republican. I thought he was out of his damned mind.

There’s a decent chance that he’s going to win the Koch primary he auditioned for. They haven’t announced a winner yet. But the fact that he auditioned should tell you all you need to know about his "libertarianism". He’s a corporatist, just like the rest of the republican party.

The only question is, how long can he maintain not sounding stupid for? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before he says or does something really, really stupid like plagiarize from an unreliable source like Wikipedia.

Rand Paul is a dimwit who has never had an independent thought in his life. That’s not going to change, no matter how many people have worked with him to de-dumb him. You can’t undo a lifetime’s worth of not using one’s brain.

He’s going to run into more racism because he’s a racist. But things like his Southern Avenger associations won’t hurt him with republicans who don’t much mind racists. Rand is racist because his father is racist and, as I pointed out earlier, Rand appears never to have had an independent thought in his life.

His entry into the race will definitely liven things up because he’s a shifty street fighter. We’ve seen him get into kerfuffles with Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio (who’s even dumber than little Rand) and he told us that he fights dirty. Rand Paul will definitely make things more interesting and depending on where the Kochs decide to put their money, he may make the republican primaries an actual race (unlike democrats, who seem to be fine with a coronation).

Ben Carson, Idiot Savant

April 5, 2015 by Bitchy

So GQ magazine did a profile on Ben Carson that they very aptly named, "What If Sarah Palin Were A Brain Surgeon?"

I say that it’s aptly titled because it’s hard not to notice that the brain surgeon is a complete idiot. I know what you’re thinking; "Come on Bitchy, the man is a brain surgeon so your political bias is clearly clouding your judgment in assessing his intelligence."

Let’s judge together, shall we?

So Carson made the (now) requisite fact finding trip to Israel, where he was provided with a guide to show him around and answer his questions.

From the article;

[His first question] "In the United States, we have Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What do you have?"

Ummmm. Don’t you think that he would have done some rudimentary internet searches to learn the basics? I mean, seriously. Who goes to a foreign country and expects someone to school them, starting at a 2nd grade level? But let’s continue with the article;

The woman answered Carson’s question about political parties, telling him that there were Labor and Likud and a host of other factions in the Knesset. "And what is the role of the Knesset?" he interjected.

"What is the Knesset?" Are you fucking kidding me? How clueless and uninformed are you? If you think I’m being harsh, let’s get back to the article;

This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature….. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. "It sounds complex," he finally said. "Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"’

"Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"

So this is the first time Ben Carson has been exposed to the mechanics of a parliamentary system, which is far more common in the first world than our one-of-a-kind representative democracy? This goes beyond stupid and ignorant. This demonstrates the same disinterest in the world that George W Bush demonstrated when he was a primary candidate. Republicans didn’t think that level of ignorance was going to be a problem. Turns out that not knowing what "Sunni" and "Shia" are was a giant problem.

So at some point during Carson’s trip, he was given three IDF (Israeli defense force, but you knew that because you’re not freaking Ben Carson!) tutors. From the article;

"….. to discuss the nearby Syrian civil war. He [the IDF member] claimed that most of the Islamist fighters weren’t Syrian but came from Morocco and Europe. "It’s just like the troublemakers in Ferguson," Carson said, betraying a habit of wedging the unfamiliar into a context he understands.

The man is a child, trying to distill everything he hears down to information that he can fit (incorrectly) into buckets of situations he’s (or so he thinks) familiar with. No, Ben Carson, there is no possible way to correlate the Syrian revolution with Ferguson Missouri, you unmitigated dolt.

At another point on his trip, he asks, "Is this area right here protected by the Iron Dome?" I’m still shaking my head, and I’ve been digesting that morsel of stupid for a couple of hours now.

Here’s another part of the article I found interesting;

Even among Carson’s political team, though, there’s some recognition that he could benefit from a little more polish. The day of the president’s State of the Union, Carson had spent five hours getting briefed on domestic and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank; the next morning, he would travel to Texas for two days of media training. But on the night of Obama’s speech, the task of getting Carson ready for the White House fell to Williams alone. He’d arranged for Carson to appear on cable news to offer some post-speech commentary and was busily prepping the doctor.

The ‘Williams’ referenced there, is Armstrong Williams. Another know-nothing radio talk show host that Barack Obama annihilated in his campaign to win the Illinois senate seat he held before he became president.

As Sam Seder (majority.fm) put it, Ben Carson will forever change the implication of the statement, "well, he’s no brain surgeon".

Negotiating With Iran

April 3, 2015 by Bitchy

As you probably know, details of the penultimate deal with Iran were published yesterday. This deal is so unbelievable, that it’s almost a mugging of Iran. Seriously, it’s hard to imagine what more could have been gotten here. Here are the key points:

Iran will give up about 14,000 of its 20,000 centrifuges. This is slightly more than we were aiming for.
Iran will give up all but its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, and they’re not allowed to build any new ones. These are 1970s era technology, meaning that if they decide to proceed in the future, they’re starting forty years behind where they are today.
Iran has agreed to not enrich uranium over 3.67% for at least 15 years. To put that in context, you need to enrich uranium at 90% to build a nuclear weapon. This also sets them back decades if they change their minds about this deal in the future.
Iran has agreed to reduce its current stockpile of about 10,000 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to 300 kg of 3.67% LEU for 15 years. You don’t need my help with that one. A 97% reduction pretty clear.
All excess centrifuges and enrichment infrastructure will be placed in IAEA monitored storage and will be used only as replacements for operating centrifuges and equipment. This is going to happen immediately, so we won’t have to wait long to see if they’re earnest in their intentions to abide by this agreement.
Iran has agreed to not build any new facilities for the purpose of enriching uranium for 15 years.
The IAEA will have regular access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including to Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz and its former enrichment facility at Fordow, and including the use of the most up-to-date, modern monitoring technologies. There’s a whole lot more language giving the IAEA the power to inspect anything, at any time, and for any reason. The level of transparency that Iran agreed to is ridiculously thorough. If someone tries to tell you that Iran can still hide stuff, ask them to provide you with an example of the IAEA missing nuclear development anywhere in the world.

You can read all of the details here (don’t let someone tell you what’s in the deal, read it for yourself).

Here’s what Iran gets in exchange for everything they agreed to; the world (US and EU) lifts its sanctions after the IAEA has verified that Iran has taken all of its key nuclear-related steps. If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its commitments, these sanctions will snap back into place.

So to recap, President Obama increased the sanctions to the point where Iran cried, "UNCLE" and gave up much more than anyone ever thought they would in exchange for lifting those sanctions. He didn’t bomb them. He didn’t get a single American soldier (or civilian for that matter) killed. He negotiated like grown ups do.

Bush handled Iraq the republican way, and we got ISIS and tens of thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. And this is just the beginning. So when republicans tell you that negotiating with Iran was stupid because we don’t know if they’re going to hold up their end of the bargain, ask them how fucking stupid and naive they think Reagan was when he negotiated with The Soviet Union. And ask them what Reagan got up front from Gorbachev before holding up his end of the deal.

It’s time for republicans to stop weighing in on foreign policy. They have a stupid view of the world, that brings terrible consequences. And they further their stupidity making up some stupid shit about (for example) how ISIS was formed because Obama pulled out of Iraq too soon. When you don’t know history, you sure as fuck don’t know how to proceed in the future. They compound their stupidity with ignorance. Not only did ISIS form in 2003, but we left Iraq when we did because we were bound by Bush’s status of forces agreement, which had an end date. Obama did his damndest to keep us there. The Iraqi government was having none of it. So even in their fairy tale version, where ISIS didn’t form until after we left Iraq, they’re still a product of Bush’s stupidity.

Republicans need to shut up now. Obama’s got this. That brings me to the other thought I had about this post I wrote four years ago (you’re going to want to read it). In it, I talk about the political theater that is being put on for us. It’s a show where we have every component of Star Wars, except that the "good guys" are hapless and can’t seem to deliver on what they really want to deliver on. Republicans are the bad guys, not even pretending to be serving anyone but their corporate masters anymore. Democrats are (we’re supposed to believe) the hapless good guys who are always being overpowered by republicans.

I’m more sure of that dynamic now than I’ve ever been. Obama can negotiate, and he can be tough. He can get more than we could have hoped for from Iran, but he couldn’t get us single payer health insurance (or even a medicare buy in provision). Obama’s kick ass performance here, in negotiating this deal, just highlights what I said in that piece four years ago.