Michele Bachman (R-MN) says so many crazy things that I just almost want her to stick around for comedic value but then I remember, she’s on the House Intelligence Committee and maybe we want people with actual intelligence there. Here’s a clip of her worrying about the “boney, death grip of Obamacare”:
And because this isn’t really any more crazy than she is, you might enjoy:
There are few areas where you can see the importance of our federal government more than when disaster strikes.
Moore, Oklahoma has seen several F-5 tornadoes — in 1999, 2003 and yesterday. At least 24 people were killed this week and part of the reason that number isn’t higher was the time of day this happened. This tornado hit during the afternoon when many residents were not home whereas the 1999 tornado touched down around 7 pm local time and 36 people were killed. Another factor in keeping the death toll down was the warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Weather Service (NWS) that gave residents time to get to shelters.
The ability to accurately predict when tornadoes are likely to strike is crucial but, like the rest of the federal government, NOAA and NWS saw their budgets cut due to the sequester. The resulting furloughs include forecasters and it looks like the NWS will be forced to use fewer weather balloons (known as “soundings”). The accuracy of weather forecasters will suffer as a result.
“It [the sounding reduction] would result in up to a 30 percent decrease in forecast accuracy,” (Dan) Sobien said. “The cost to the country [of the reduced forecast accuracy] would be exponentially higher and could cost lives.
Dan Sobien is the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. That quote was from a Washington Post piece that can be found here.
To add insult to injury, people affected by natural disasters like this may not get the help they need because the Federal Emergency Management Agency‘s (FEMA) budget has also been cut by approximately $1 billion. After FEMA compensates victims of Hurricane Sandy ($10.8 billion), the agency will have $2.5 billion left — and that has to last for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends September 30th. Funding for other disaster relief programs have also been cut by $1.9 billion.
The US has some of the most volatile weather on earth. It sees more tornadoes than any other country on earth. They are also stronger than those that hit other countries. May is the peak month for tornadoes but they can occur at any time.
It is easy to ignore what happens in Washington, DC and think that, like Las Vegas, what happens there, stays there but it doesn’t. Next week marks the start hurricane season. If more tornadoes like the one that hit Moore strike and/or we have a busy hurricane season, it is very feasible that FEMA will run out of money before the next fiscal year begins.
The sequester was supposed to be the stick that forced Congress to do its job and deal with the hard issues facing our country but they aren’t the ones being hurt by the cuts that were enacted when they failed. They passed a law to make them forfeit their paychecks if both chambers didn’t pass a budget. They may have met that low bar, they haven’t finished the job — no conference committee has been announced so all we have is two separate budgets and no plan to reconcile the differences.
Accurate forecasting leads to giving people ample warning and saves lives. FEMA and other programs, help people put their lives back together after a disaster. Both are crucial, not only to the people directly impacted by storms and earthquakes but all of us and our economy. The time has come for Congress to do its job.
If You Like Ken Cuccinelli, you’ll love his pick to be lieutenant governor, E.W. Jackson. Jackson released this video. I will let it speak for itself.
The program known as “Women, Infants and Children” (WIC) is officially the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Their web site can be found here. The site describes the program this way:
“The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.”
The program serves approximately nine million people. As the sequester kicked in a few months ago, this is one of the programs whose funding will be impacted. It’s solvent through the end of the fiscal year (30 September 2013) but its future after that is not so certain. There are few examples more clear of how we expect the people who can least afford it to pay for our government’s irresponsibility.
The Center on Budget a Policy Priorities has released this report on the impact the cuts will have on this program. The cuts to the program’s budget come at a time when increases are needed to maintain it for the 8.9 million people who depend on it. While it appears, the United States’ economy is recovering, for too many people recovery is a long way off. WIC is an incredibly successful and effective program. To do anything but increase its funding will make it turn people who need the services away.
All of this because Congress can’t do its job. The sequester was supposed to be so bad that no one would let it actually be enacted but it was. Congress even passed “no budget, no pay” requiring both sides of Capitol Hill pass budget resolutions by 15 April or forfeit their salaries. Sounds good, right? Not so fast. Both chambers passed budgets — a big deal in some ways, the Senate has not passed one since 2009 but at the end of the day, it means almost nothing. While both chamber met the bar set to keep members getting their salaries, the next step — appoint conferees to work out the differences between the two budget– has not happened.
It’s time for Congress to stop wasting time passing bills to repeal Obamacare and do something to help people who need it.
Graphical representation of the number of people killed by guns since the Sandy Hook shooting.
At least 4,156 people have been killed in the United States since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in December. Slate and @gunviolence are tracking the numbers of deaths by guns since December 14, 2012 and have created an interactive site where you can filter their gun data by age, gender, city and date. The image to the right is a screen shot from that page. The real one is clickable. Check it out here.
While the country changed that day for a number of people, much of Congress remains mired in the past. With Republican senators like Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) clinging to the excuse that she just doesn’t want a registry of gun owners and a House of Representatives unwilling to do anything that might make President Obama look good, it’s hard to see real reforms becoming a reality.
I hope I am wrong about that.
The First Amendment is sacred to me. It sits at the heart of what our system of government is all about. The right of the people to express their views openly without the fear of government retribution is fundamental. The right of the press to investigate the government is essential. The Fourth Estate‘s ability to do its work without worrying about government interference is as essential as the people’s to speak their minds.
Having said all of that the idea that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did searches and investigations of Tea Party groups and those with the word “patriot” in their names is so wrong, just as wrong as when the IRS did the same thing to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was also really stupid.
Now reports are out that the Associated Press‘ (AP) phones have been monitored. Not just individual phones but main ones, used by multiple reporters to call God knows how many sources. There is no justification for this kind of action.
Everyone involved with both of these has to go. Eric Holder should either resign or be fired. I don’t know which one I prefer, I go back and forth but he needs to go. If he really thought this was a good idea, he should not have been there in the first place.
And you, Mr. President, should also know better. As a former constitutional professor, I would expect you would be familiar with the First Amendment and the reasons it is so important to our democratic process. I am really, really disappointed in you on this one.
These also are incredibly stupid moves politically. To give people who already think the government overreaches at best and is actively pursuing them at worst is unbelievably stupid. You undermine all the work you want to do in Congress (gun control, immigration) and what people all over the country do to elect Democrats. We try to explain that the government can do good and is not the force for evil they think it is and then the IRS does this? Nice. Thanks.
Now, personally, I think the IRS mess was incompetence, who hired these people? I am far more upset by the AP mess in terms of looking at the motive behind it (I don’t think the IRS’ actions were politically motivated just stupid). This administration has shown contempt for the media as most do. But this smacks of more than the normal adversarial back and forth between the press and the president.
What I also don’t get is the complete lack of thinking. Did you really think this would not be found out? The House Republicans are leaving no stone unturned to make this president look sinister. This administration should know better than to do things that look sinister. Both of these things look sinister. WTF?
The actions of this administration are undermining the American public’s trust of its government. That is exactly what the Republicans want.
President Obama, you’d best respond more angrily about this next time or the Democrats are going to lose the Senate in 2014 and have no chance of getting the House back. If you like working with a Congress that’s only half Republican now, you’re gonna love it when they have the whole thing. This will also make it harder for any Democrat to win in 2016.
The Republicans have two goals with the whole Banghazi “investigation”; to embarrass Democrats and to find someone to blame.
Bill O’Reilly said the other day: “The Republicans want to get the truth about Benghazi because it embarrasses Democrats.” Really? I thought they said they wanted to “get to the truth” and “prevent this from happening again.” How does embarrassing Democrats do either?
Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA/Chair, Oversight and Government Reform Committee) held a hearing on what happened in Benghazi and appeared on Meet the Press (MTP) to talk about it.
“A jury trial is about assigning blame. Santiago‘s dead. They want to know who’s to blame.” Daniel “Danny” Kaffee, A Few Good Men.
(All of the rest of the quotes are from the MTP transcript from May 12, 2013.)
But that’s not how Issa sees it. He seems to want to find someone to blame.
“But one of the problems with this ARB report is, it doesn’t seem to find anybody at the high level of state department or anyone else to have failed. And I’m going to tell you something. Certainly, Under Secretary Kennedy who has not been held accountable– three of his people have been held supposedly accountable, but he was getting the facts on a daily basis and one of the questions is, isn’t this career professional of 34 years or more– isn’t there some accountability? We certainly think that it needs to be asked.” Rep. Issa
Later in the interview:
GREGORY: ”You’ve got Republicans talking about this being Watergate. One Republican raising the specter of impeachment. Conservative groups raising money off of the Benghazi story. Are you hurting your own credibility and your own find– fact-finding mission by politically overreaching?” (emphasis added)
REP. ISSA: ”Well, if I was, then I would be. But I’m not. (emphasis added) You know, I– I investigated the mineral management service and made strong recommendations to the Bush administration that it needed real change because it was a dysfunctional agency. And I’m sad that I didn’t stay on top of it more tenaciously because ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico got filled with oil because that agency wasn’t doing enough of its job of making sure the oil companies did their job. So I can never again look at something where four men died and I believe needlessly and then say, well, I’m going to just say they’ve taken care of it, it won’t happen again. No. Congress has an obligation to say, what did you do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? And Charlene Lamb and other low-ranking people being reassigned to other jobs. That’s not going to prevent these three separate mistakes from happening again.”
The Accountability Board Report (ARB) investigated the incident and found some serious problems with how this was handled and made suggestions but there was a big disconnect for me because Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who is the Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs/Chair, Accountability Review Board on Benghazi was on the show.
REP. ISSA: You know, let’s not blow things out of proportion. This is a failure, it needs to be investigated. Our committee can investigate. Now, Ambassador Pickering, his people and he refused to come before our committee that… (emphasis added)
AMB. THOMAS PICKERING (Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs/Chair, Accountability Review Board on Benghazi): That is not true. (emphasis added)
GREGORY: All right. We’re– we’re going to get to Ambassador Pickering.
REP. ISSA: We have– we have it in– we have it in writing, we have White House correspondence. It may not have been the Ambassador’s decision but it was the White House decision. That has been reversed. We’re inviting him on Monday along with Admiral Mullen to come, to go through, with his papers, a private deposition so we can get the facts in a nonpartisan way.
GREGORY: Right.
REP. ISSA: We’ll have Republicans and Democratic…
GREGORY: Well, all right. Ambassador Pickering, you– you just jumped in here. You’re willing to appear?
AMB. PICKERING: Of course. I’ve said the day before the hearings, I was willing to appear to come to the very hearings that he disclu– he excluded me from. The White House told me back that he said…
REP. ISSA: One second. Please– please don’t tell me I excluded you. (emphasis added)
AMB. PICKERING: Well, the– the majority was– we were told the majority said I was not welcomed at that hearing. I could come at some other time.
REP. ISSA: Well, as– as the ambassador just said, the day before the hearing, if the White House said we’d like to have him, there’s a procedure. He could have been the Democratic witness. And we would have allowed him. The Democrats requested no witness. The fact is, we don’t want to have some sort of a stage show. We had fact witnesses. They testified. We have the Ambassador and– and Admiral Mullen who conducted and oversaw the ARB. We’re inviting them on Monday. We’ll go through, not in front of the public but– but in a nonpartisan way questions and answers and then obviously…
GREGORY: All right.
REP. ISSA: …a hearing to follow at an appropriate time. I’m delighted to have a long-serving career diplomat willing to come before us. I don’t think it was his decision to say no. But we were told no until just before the hearing
Truthfully, I have two serious questions about what happened that night and a strong opinion about one thing. Question 1: Who put that crazy story about a protest into the official talking points? Opinion: that person or those people should fired. Not for conspiring about anything but for being stupid. I get it, the truth went against the narrative. A better answer would have been, “We have been attacked by terrorists but like Osama bin Laden, we will get them.” We all know we live in a dangerous world and can handle the truth even when it is horrible.
More important question 2: on 9/11, why was this area left so exposed on a day like this? The military response troubles me. There was nothing close enough to get there in time. That is inexcusable. From what I heard in the hearing and have read, the military did not have any way to get, say a jet in from Aviano Air Force base in Italy because there were no tankers for it to refuel in the Mediterranian. I am not a military or intelligence expert but having our ambassador in that position seems really irresponsible.
This was a tragedy and mistakes were made but it was not a coverup. I don’t oppose the idea of hearings if they are there to actually learn something but I cannot support a witch hunt.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, Chair, Intelligence Committee) put it best:
“Well, I disagree with the conclusion. We have held six separate hearings. We have interviewed every intelligence head. We have read the e-mails. We sent a subs– spent a– a considerable amount of time with David Petraeus when he was director of the agency with the CIA, analysts involved. We will shortly be producing what I hope will be a bipartisan review. You know, what– what I hear being assessed is all kinds of ulterior motives, and I don’t believe they existed. And I have looked through all of the intelligence proceeding, Benghazi. There was no tactical intelligence, but there was intelligence to the effect that there had been prior attacks, that this was a dangerous area. You can say the security was inadequate. It was. But it was– this was not a consulate or an embassy, therefore it did not have marines. You can question whether it should have been there in the first place. But I don’t think you can question that there was malevolence on the part of the president, on the part of the secretary of state or anyone else. It was a very unfortunate incident that turned in to be, I think, a great and very painful learning experience.
…well, let– let me– let me say this. I think the talking points were wrong. I think the talking points should not be written by the intelligence community. I think the intelligence community should not be doing talking points for members of Congress and our report will in essence say that. Talking points can’t be done by committee either. And these were. They were passed from one to the other to the other. And changes were made. The White House made virtually no changes. The word “consulate” was changed to “mission” and John Brennan made a change in syntax of one sentence. That was it.”
This was much longer than I intended. I still have a fantasy that I can be fair and impartial so I put more of the transcript in to make sure I wasn’t just putting the parts that I think show my point. If anyone from Congressman Issa would like to respond, please do. And while I am being honest, my first job out of college was in Senator Feinstein’s office.
If you lie to Congress, it is a crime. It’s called perjury. You may remember that when Roger Clemens did it, he barely escaped two counts of it. And you should remember that the official reason President Bill Clinton was impeached was because of perjury (you know, it had nothing to do with the rabid hatred the GOP had of him, then Congressman Bob Barr, R-GA, asked aloud, If we can’t get rid of him with impeachment what else can we do? Uh, win an election.)
So if it is illegal for citizens to lie TO Congress, why is is legal for them to lie to us?
First case of lying: Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Issa has made some wild claims about Benghazi. One that he has repeated is that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally signed a cable about Benghazi. This has been refuted by all of the whistleblowers and a Washington Post fact checker called that assertion “a whopper” (from Congressman Elijah Cummings’, D-MD testimony at the hearing on the subject on May 8, 2013 — you can watch it online). All State Department cables have the Secretary’s name.
Yet, Issa repeats this claim over and over and over. The goal, of course, is to weaken Secretary Clinton because she is the front runner for the Democratic Party and is popular among Republicans. The only thing they can find to hurt her is this. Truthfully, that we had people in such a dangerous place left so far away from military support seems really upsetting. I am torn from thinking this is Libya, this was September 11th, how could we leave our ambassador so unprotected? The Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigated and released this report. They found that mistakes were made and offered suggestions to prevent this from happening ever again. They were not wimpy as they have been called by some on the right. They were thorough and pretty scathing. There is no question that this should not have happened.
What we know is that when the idea of increasing funding for diplomatic security came up, many of these Republicans who are so unhappy with what happened now, said “no.”
(Disclaimer: I worked for the Clinton Administration on and off for most of it. I also worked for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign and support the idea of her running in 2016.)
Liar number 2: Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
Senator Ayotte has been questioned about her vote against the recent gun control bill. Her response has been — more than once — that she opposed it because she doesn’t want there to be a national registry of gun owners. I support gun control and I don’t want that either. I voted against former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty because, at least partially, he almost went through with a policy to send DC police door-to-door to request residents turn over any guns they didn’t want in their home. If said guns could be tied to a crime, the people who turned them over could be charged with that crime. That is ridiculous.
The bill Senator Ayotte voted against had no such provision. Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) put a provision in the bill making it a felony to keep information on people who had bought a gun past a certain amount of time. No one wants to see such a registry.
I don’t know what her real reason was and would like to hear it because I feel like every other five minutes I hear someone on the right whining that “No one read the bill!” Read the damn bill. And if you have a real reason for going against this common sense bill, please share it. I might even agree with the real reason, if I knew what it was.
And the liars that love them.
Could the right be happier about anything than Benghazi? Were they this upset with President Bush for letting 9/11 happened? (Didn’t he get a report entitled Bin laden determined to attack the US within the US? Did he not have intelligence that al Qaeda was looking at using airplanes? Yes on both. You may remember how I was jumping up and down begging for hearings? Oh, you don’t? This isn’t just because I am not a major TV network but because I am not a truther nor do I see politics in every event on earth).
Second problem I have with the right’s response is their comparison to Watergate. They say “when Obama lied, people died.” I have two problems with that statement. The first issue I have is substantive. President Obama has not lied. This is not a cover-up. This is a tragedy and shows some real holes in the way we do business that need to be fixed. Secondly, it implies that these lies caused deaths. Even if this was true, they happened after the event in question so any attempts at finding a causality are just ridiculous.
On the gun control thing, the National Rifle Association and American Future Fund have some to Senator Ayotte’s defense. The latter has sponsored ads that compound her lie with one of their own. They claim she has voted for increased background checks when she did the opposite. Read that here (and see the ad).
One thing that gets under my skin more than many things is when people put up with politicians who lie because that’s just how it’s done. We get the government we settle for, we need to expect better.
The conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, released a report this week that included findings about “non-white” immigrants, whom they assert do not possess the intellectual capacity of their white counterparts. This was proven this week when they published a report, authored by one of their senior people. Hired n 2010 as a Senior Policy Analyst, Jason Richwine was a co-author of their report on immigration. You can get a full version here.
The gist of the report is we need to screen out non-white immigrants because they lack the ability to reach whites’ intellectual ability. Oh, no, Heritage, this does not make you racist at all. Did no one vet this before you published it? No one?
The Washington Post did a summary.
That rhetorical strategy is reflected in Heritage’s current work on immigration. His and Rector’s report recommends greatly reducing “low-skilled” immigration and increasing “high-skilled” immigration. “The legal immigration system should be altered to greatly reduce the number of low-skill immigrants entering the country and increase the number of new entrants with high levels of education and skills that are in demand by U.S. firms,” they write.
Funny thing Richwine’s dissertation from Harvard (in 2009, before he was hired) should have known about views because he was pretty clear in that. If I were in the position to hire someone to do research for me, I would read their dissertation, which came out before he was hired in MARCH of 2010. I emphasize that because that gave them at least two months to read it while they vetted him.
Again from the Washington Post,
Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”
Ironically, as people — including Heritage who disavowed those views, though it is interesting that he resigned, he was NOT fired — the right is calling an rejection of these views a “crucifixion.” Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve leaped to his defense. Murray tweeted: Jason Richwine, guilty of crimethink, “resigns.” The bashing from the right has been as mindless as from the left. Thank God I was working for Chris DeMuth and AEI, not Jim DeMint and Heritage, when The Bell Curve was published. Integrity. Loyalty. Balls.
Oh yeah, it’s not his racism, it’s because he committed “crimethink.” What if the word douchebag only referred to white men? How they respond to someone who said, those who use the word douchebag are racists? Would they think they were racist? I think they would. Would they call critics of that kind of thing “victims of crimethink“? I doubt it.
Remember though, Murray has committed the same crime, his book lists what each ethnicity’s IQ should be. Really. Synopsis of the book here.
They summarize part 3, this way:
Part 3 (Chapters 13 – 17) addresses issues of a national focus, turning attention to cognitive and social behavioral differences between racial and ethnic groups. The controversy surrounding these topics, and the incredibly complex nature of the comparisons being made is acknowledged by the authors from the outset; the reader is cautioned to “read carefully”. The assertions and conclusions reached in this part of The Bell Curve include the following:
Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability – East Asians typically earn higher IQ scores than white Americans, especially in the verbal intelligence areas. African-Americans typically earn IQ scores one full standard deviation below those of white Americans. The IQ difference between African-Americans and whites remains at all levels of socioeconomic status (SES), and is even more pronounced at higher levels of SES. Recent narrowing of the average IQ gap between black and white Americans (about 3 IQ points) is attributed to a lessening of low black scores and not an overall improvement in black scores on average. The debate over genes versus environment influences on the race IQ gap is acknowledged.
The Demography of Intelligence – Mounting evidence indicates that demographic trends are exerting downward pressure on the distribution of cognitive ability in the United States and that the pressures are strong enough to have social consequences. Birth rates among highly educated women are falling faster than those of low IQ women. The IQ of the average immigrant of today is 95, lower than the national average, but more importantly the new immigrants are less brave, less hard working, less imaginative, and less self-starting than many of the immigrant groups of the past.
Social Behavior and the Prevalence of Low Cognitive Ability – For most of the worst social problems of our time, the people who have the problem are heavily concentrated in the lower portion of the cognitive ability spectrum. Solutions designed to solve or mitigate any of these problems must accommodate, even be focused towards, the low cognitive ability profile if they are to have any hope of succeeding.
To summarize his views on race and IQ, he feels it determines it. Born to certain races, you may have a shot at being smart. To others, well, good luck. And this is a guy supporting Richwine? With friends like that? I found a great article that showed a breakdown of how he views what races are smarter but cannot find the link.
Yes, the Heritage Foundation says the views in the report are not their own. This was only after they were hit by anyone with a brain that isn’t totally wired by their partisan bent. The left, the right, the middle all said, This is crap. Good, it is.
PS. Was I at all surprised about Heritage’s view. No. Not even a little bit.
Few things are more irritating than stupidity. What makes this even more annoying is knowing you are paying for it. Congressman Eric Cantor has scheduled a vote this week repealing “Obamacare.” His proposal’s chances of passing the Senate and/or being signed into law by President Obama are pretty much the same. Talk about exercises in futility.
The House cut its operating budget in 2011 by five percent. More info on that can be found here. That amounts to nearly $33 million a year. Legistorm has information on how much each office spends on salaries for members and staffers. One sure thing cam be said of all the offices from the big spenders to the most frugal is the source of the funding. Paying for Eric Cantor to drag te House through this flight of fancy/political posturing at its most absurd. No one — even Cantor himself, sees this as becoming law — at least not with the current Senate and White House.
This is shameful and not our founding fathers had in mind when they crafted our constitution.
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