August 4, 2014

FACEPALM: Republicans Had To Explain To GOP Colleagues WHY Torture Is Wrong.

WASHINGTON -- Ahead of the expected release of a massive, damning report on the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture in the years after 9/11, at least two Republican senators felt the need to explain something to their GOP colleagues: Torture is wrong.

That was the message Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) relayed as Congress recessed until September, anticipating the possible release of a declassified version of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report of 600-plus pages on CIA abuses.

They felt compelled to speak out because several Republican members of the committee are believed to have written a dissenting section of the report that contends that torture helped save American lives.


McCain, a former member of the Intelligence Committee who knows the report's outline, and Graham, a military lawyer, dispute that the torture of terrorism suspects helped prevent attacks. But even if it did, they argue, any benefit was far outweighed by the damage done to America's reputation and the resulting boost to terrorists' ability to recruit new members.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/04/cia-torture_n_5648234.html

August 4, 2014

NEVER EVER be under the delusion that Willard Romney did NOT run a Southern Strategy campaign.

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I’m Coming to Get Ya, I’m Coming to Get Ya



Spitting out lyrics homie I’ll wet ya:

August 4, 2014

Republican Dirt Machine - Trolling Hillary From The Left?

Despite--and perhaps, because of-- the unquestioning, lockstep support and complete lack of criticism of Hillary from Democratic sites such as this, the GOP is taking no chances. A Republican SuperPac, "America Rising" has been formed for the purpose of, among other things, inciting the left's progressive base against the Hillary juggernaut:

America Rising, formed by a former Romney Staffer with the aid of the RNC, has already had some measured success at negative Hillary-framing for a gullible U.S. corporate media eager to stoke the meme of "Democrats in disarray:"




MORE:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/america-rising-hillary-clinton-trolling
https://www.americarisingpac.org/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/04/1318968/-The-New-Republican-Pastime-Trolling-Hillary-From-The-Left

August 4, 2014

The End of Reefer Madness? by Katrina vanden Heuvel

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The End of Reefer Madness?
Katrina vanden Heuvel

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Last November, of course, The Nation went all-in on marijuana-law reform with our “Dope and Change” issue, and I wrote, “If Congress—with its dismal 8 percent approval rating—wants to enjoy a popularity as high as marijuana’s, it might consider revisiting pot’s federal prohibition.” The blanket federal ban is unworkable on many levels, not least of which is the capriciousness of its enforcement: Given the crazy-quilt of state and local medicinal and decriminalization laws, the actual prohibition of marijuana in this country comes down to, as the Times puts it, “the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law.” Needless to say, this type of jurisprudence is neither fair nor just; Harry Levine reported in “Dope and Change” that since 1997 in New York City, 87 percent of NYPD’s 600,000 marijuana-possession arrests were of blacks and Latinos.

The data-driven, nuts-and-bolts reasons for legalization are legion, and—to an unbiased eye—overwhelmingly convincing. But the bias behind prohibition, born out of 1920s- and ’30s-era xenophobia and racism, continues to impress itself on the minds of pundits and policymakers across the political spectrum. “The problem that prohibition advocates have,” writes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, “is that so much of their rhetoric hasn’t changed in decades, steeped in culture war resentments and reliant on fear-mongering.” A 2008 article on AlterNet illustrates that twentieth-century drug prohibition was born in places where white minorities ruled over non-white majorities—South Africa and Jamaica, for example—before becoming a xenophobic tool of law enforcement (against Latinos in California and Texas, Middle Eastern immigrants in New York, Asians on the Pacific Coast) in places with white majorities.


An examination into the whys and wherefores of our broken cannabis policy is well overdue. After all, this story can and should be about more than just marijuana. American pot prohibition ought to be seen as a cautionary tale of what happens when we create policy based not on appropriately reasoned ideas, but rather on fear, racism and the sensational-but-unfounded caterwauling of policymakers and think-tankers who should know better.

If American drug prohibition laws were enacted, as is convincingly argued, in the service of furthering discrimination, then you’d have to say—based on the arrest and incarceration numbers—that they’ve been a smashing success. But as far as advancing public health goes… well, they’re a disaster. This discrepancy is worth noting. At a time when governmental dysfunction is so prevalent and the demand for congressional action—any action—is high, we need to be aware of the real motives we’re asking our elected officials to promote (For example, how much of our “homeland security” policy is actually driven by xenophobia and racism? How much resistance to the Affordable Care Act?). With marijuana, bigotry-based policy has delivered a nearly 100-year-long quagmire from which we’re only now beginning to extricate ourselves with fact-based debate and informed dissent.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/180874/end-reefer-madness

August 4, 2014

GOP re-Benghazi: No red meat for the base-No ground beef-No flavored broth-Not even a bouillon cube.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and his House Intelligence Committee just wrapped up two years of Benghazi!!!. What they found: no red meat for the base. No ground beef. No flavored broth. Not even a bouillon cube.

Among the Intelligence Committee’s findings, according to Thompson:

– Intelligence agencies were “warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened.”

– “A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack.”

– “There was no ‘stand-down order’ given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind.”

– The administration’s process for developing “talking points” was “flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis.

”

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/House-panel-No-administration-wrongdoing-in-5663509.php
via:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/08/04/batting-next-darrell-issa/