Craziest Republican of the Day: Lindsey Graham

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ThinkProgress:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) pushed back against efforts to limit the availability of assault weapons during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday by echoing the paranoia of the National Rifle Association and insisting that Americans would need access to AR-15s to protect themselves from "roaming gangs" during natural disasters.

Speaking to Attorney General Eric Holder, Graham argued that an AR-15 would have been "a better defense tool" than "a double-barrel shotgun" in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina or Sandy.

Um, does Graham know anything about the damage an AR-15 can do? And he really thinks people would be better off if they, and a lot of other people, had these killing machines, these weapons of mass destruction, to defend themselves? 

Holder pointed out that it's unlikely that "New Orleans would have been better served with people with AR-15s in a post Katrina environment," which was marked by chaos, violence and looting. 

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Not from The Onion: Michael Brown on the response to Sandy

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Mustang Bobby

MJWS:

I've always thought that Brown was Bush's convenient scapegoat after Katrina, even if it was clear that he wasn't at all qualified for the job and didn't do anywhere near a good job, let alone a heckuva one. He and I even had some e-mail exchanges several years ago after I published a post at The Moderate Voice (somewhat) defending him. He's a nice guy, or at least he was to me, and he seemed like a thoughtful man.

But this... this is just stupid, not to mention unnecessarily partisan (and self-defensive) at a time when what is needed, as Chris Christie knows, isn't division but unity. And if he's really having a hard time figuring out the difference between Benghazi and Sandy, perhaps he should think a little harder. One involves trying to gether meaningful intelligence after a sudden uprising/attack in a dangerous foreign location, while the other involves responding, with measures already in place, to the devastation caused by a storm that everyone knew was coming, along the rather less foreign eastern seabord of the United States.

If you have trouble getting your head around that, you shouldn't be commenting publicly about anything, especially if you didn't have much credibility to begin with.

**********

MB:

Michael ("Heckuvajob Brownie") Brown, failed ex-head of FEMA under George W. Bush who completely screwed up Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, on President Obama's response to Hurricane Sandy:

"One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in... Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?" Brown says. "Why was this so quick?... At some point, somebody's going to ask that question... This is like the inverse of Benghazi."

Yeah: he's saying President Obama responded too quickly.

There's never a large polo mallet around when you need one.

I love the smell of desperation in the morning

By Carl 

So Matt Drudge ran a quiet little headline yesterday about a blockbuster video he was going to release on the Hannity show on Fox News. Hannity promo'd it on his website, albeit in a fairly low-key manner.

Both, however, called it a game changer.

The result? This:

On the eve of the first presidential debate, conservative media outlets seized on footage of a five-year-old speech by then-candidate Barack Obama, who argued at the time that the federal government discriminated against Hurricane Katrina victims.

The June 2007 speech at Hampton University in Virginia was widely covered, as Obama was already well into his presidential campaign. However, the conservative news outlets that pushed the video Tuesday night argued the media skipped over portions of the speech...

Speaking to a largely black audience, Obama in the video made the case that race relations still had a long way to go in the United States, claiming the divide most severely has an impact on impoverished parts of the country.

The 2007 event was not a closed, secret gathering. It was open to the press, and CNN affiliate WAVY filmed the full speech. The crux of his speech was reported by CNN at the time. 

This same opening was mirrored in nearly every news organization and on every television news program last night and this morning.

Put it this way: this speech was so pedestrian that even Fox News didn't raise a stink about it when it occured. It's not like Barack Obama wasn't already on the radar, as this is three years after his "there are no red states" speech at the 2004 convention, which catapulted him into the limelight for 2008.

The point he raised at the time, the point conservatives jumped on, was an obscure fact of policy known as the Stafford Act, which says the local and state governments must kick in at least 25% against any Federal monies. This was waived after the 9/11 attacks, as well as Hurricane Andrew, but curiously, not for New Orleans and Louisiana after Katrina.

Nutbag conservatives jumped on this observation as an example of Barack Obama's overt racism. Funny thing about the speech, though...

Obama described this rejection of New Orleans as "colorblind," a point neither Hannity nor Drudge, nor even The Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson made in the release of the tape. The Daily Caller was the organization that apparently re-edited the speech to suit conservative purposes.

Here's the thing: if you want to defend the Bush administration handling of Katrina, that's a debate I bet President Obama would re-visit in a heartbeat, as there have been any number of global-warming induced natural disasters on his watch that were handled professionally and promptly. Indeed, I bet he'd make almost the exact same speech today if asked to.

As a side note to Tucker: how racist is it to point out Barack Obama's patois? Is it any more ridiculous than pointing out that Romney suddenly developed a love of grits when he campaigned in the South?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Nature's way

By Mustang Bobby

No one would wish a natural disaster on anyone, and I'm glad that Tropical Storm Isaac did not hit Tampa and the Republican convention: it rains on the just and the unjust alike. And I don't believe in such superstitions as divine intervention via floods, earthquakes, and other tectonic phenomena to deliver judgment on the actions of humans.

But I can't help but notice the timing of the arrival of Hurricane Isaac on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans and the fact that anyone over the age of ten is reminded that it was exactly seven years ago that Hurricane Katrina wrought horrible destruction on the city and the heckuva job the last Republican administration did in responding to it.

It doesn't make for good visuals that the GOP is partying on while the networks are breaking away to bring us live coverage from the storm and the overtopping of the levees in Plaquemines Parish.

Call it what you will: the hand of God, karma, or a tropical cyclone. It's just nature's way of reminding us that a sense of timing isn't a quality that is unique to us mere mortals. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Just how crazy is Sharron Angle? (8)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Welcome, Sun readers. For more on Angle's craziness, click here and scroll down.)

As the Las Vegas Sun's Jon Ralston reports, Angle, the far-right, insurgent Nevada Republican nominee for Senate (running against Harry Reid, of course), proudly declared in '06, when she ran for Congress, that she would have voted against the $62 billion in Katrina relief that Congress approved in September '05.

Only 11 House members voted against the package, which received broad bipartisan support. Far-right Rep. Mike Pence, whom Angle specifically mentions in her comments, voted for it, as did the Republican leadership, which at the time included Rep. Tom DeLay, hardly a big-government liberal. Sure, Republicans knew it would look bad to vote against relief, and against the victims of one of the worst natural disasters in American history, but at least most of them did the right thing, whatever their motivations.

Angle might have voted for it, too, or been pressured to vote for it, but the fact -- and it's on tape, thankfully, as Angle is whitewashing her past -- is that she came out publicly and determinedly against it.

Now, I'm all for budget sanity, too, but there are times when government has to step in and do what needs to be done, as in the case of historic economic crises and massive hurricanes that cause extraordinary damage to life and property. Just think back to those horrendous images of New Orleans, of so much of the Gulf Coast. You really want to play politics with that? You really want to hold out for offsets, or else?

That says an awful lot about just what sort of a human being Sharron Angle is. She's crazy, as we've known for some time, but evidently she's also cruel, the proponent of a conservative ideology, to the extent that she really understands what she claims to support, that seemingly cares nothing for human suffering, that pushes the failed trickle-down economic polities of the past at the expense of common decency, and that would have let Katrina's victims and homes, not to mention a great American city, rot.

It's good these tapes are out there, because we all, and Nevadans in particular, need to know just what Angle is all about.

So the days float through my eyes

By Carl

I find myself in agreement with Christopher Hitchens of Slate. Thank you, President George W. Bush. Thank you for your eight years of service to this great and proud nation.

Now, before you choke on your cornflakes, let's take a look back at the past eight years and understand, truly, the great thing this man did for our nation.

Having his father's cronies steal an election in 2000 by manipulating first the Florida vote count and then the Supreme Court of the United States, he took office as the first President in nearly 150 years to lose the plurality of votes in an election, but win the electoral college. This reminded us how fragile our freedoms are, and how short-sighted the Founding Fathers could be, by making a wholly unpopulated state like Wyoming or North Dakota have an outsized voice in the direction of this nation.

He made education a centerpiece of his first term, proving that even Republicans who have tried to dismantle any federal education policy recognize the importance of education. However, the gaming of the system, teaching to the test, has rigidified the educational process and stifled ambition, creativity, and thinking, skills that will be desperately needed in the years ahead with the challenges facing us. In effect, George Bush managed to outsource intelligence.

With approval ratings in his first year tanking into the 40% range, an unprecedented collapse in popularity, 9/11 happened on his watch, despite his best efforts to ignore the warnings. Bush proved that confronting your problems and facing them are far more valuable than praying them away. his recovery advice, to shop, probably pushed back this economic meltdown until, well, the end of his administration, proving that no good deed goes unpunished, and that people don't have unlimited credit like many faux Texans who own a ranch with one head of cattle do.

After 9/11, Bush fought hard to establish the Patriot Act, which created the single largest bureaucracy in American history after the US military, proving that Republicans could be as profligate with tax payer money as a drunken sailor in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Which brings me to...

Katrina. Sure, the Coast Guard got there quickly and was effective in rescuing hundreds of stranded people. That's what they are trained to do, and they train constantly to do it. No, the knee jerk, reflexive immediate response of the federal government was good.

It's the stuff they actually had to plan and carry out that got all screwy. In this instance, Bush proved the truth about cronyism: It's OK to pick cronies, just make sure the cronies you pick know what the hell they are doing (see also Hank Paulson in 2008). Hundreds if not thousands died while Bush circled overhead in Air Force One like a vulture, heading out to Arizona to help destroy John McCain's candidacy.

The war in Iraq proved that sending US troops willy-nilly into harm's way, without an effective battle plan, and more important, and effective peace plan, should never, EVER, happen again. We had no business being there, and have no business remaining behind except to clean up our mess.

As well, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay made us stop and realize that even the freest of nations can lose that freedom if the nation acts in any way, shape or form tyrannically. These were silly incidents that should never have been allowed to happen.

Many might legitimately disagree with the outcome, but no one can deny that wars of aggression never ever work out well in the end for the aggressor. We'll spend many years cleaning up and making amends and apologies to the world community in the hopes that our rightful place in leadership of that community may be graciously restored to us.

People forgive mistakes. They'll have a hard time forgiving us for 2004.

Finally, the economy is in the tank, and if we're lucky, if we're extremely lucky, Barack Obama will find a keystone to set it straight that will have us well into recovery after his first term. We'll see on that score.

But, if anything, this depression has finally proved the old saw that Harry S. Truman used to say regularly when campaigning: "If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic."

Right now, we've voted twice for Republicans, and are facing a diminished, depleted life. Tax cuts can only do so much. The Bush legacy will be one of reckless abandon to reward the plutocracy of this nation for raping our resources and then turning their backs on the people of America. This must not stand.

So, in an attempt to be conciliatory, I've tried to find the one thing that Bush has done to make this a better nation, a better world. A couple of things cropped up in my research.

1) He increased funding to Africa to combat AIDS and malaria. OK, true, this is a positive thing, to be sure, but how positive? Bush raised funding from about $2 billion to $3 billion, adding 50%, in 2006. And that was with strings attached, like abstinence-only sex education. And the program could only use American branded drugs, not generic drugs. He's further expanded this with a $48 billion dollar bill over 5 years, about $40 billion for AIDS ($8 billion a year). This would represent about 0.006% of annual gross domestic product, however. Japan contributes 0.7% of it's GDP. There's a lot more to be done there.

2) He's kept us safe from terror attacks since 2001. Sort of. I mean, there were the still-unsolved anthrax attacks, the series of sniper shootings in Virginia, any number of abortion clinic bombings, the attack in Washington state where that man shot up the offices of a Jewish organization... and of course, the attacks overseas, in London, Madrid, and Mumbai.

It should also be pointed out that there were no terror attacks in the seven years leading up to 9/11. I'm sure the Bushbots will credit him with that, too.

So, no. It would be hard to credit Bush with purely positive results even in these miniscule eddies of the flow of his administration.

And then it hit me. There is one undeniable positive that President George W. Bush, the 43rd and soon-to-be former president, has done for America.

Thank you, President Bush, for making it safe to be a liberal again.

(Cross-posted at Simply Left Behind.)