Was the Borking of Brendan Eich just another way to distract from Benghazi?
Update. Or something even more sinister?
by DougJ| 60 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Was the Borking of Brendan Eich just another way to distract from Benghazi?
Update. Or something even more sinister?
Comments are closed.
TaMara (BHF)
Hmm, my Balloon-Juice buttons have changed (I am NOT complaining, just noting).
In other news, I have a very high tech paperweight, so I can leave the window open next to my desk without worry of breezes.
JPL
All of it Doug, all of it.
raven
I have a newly re-upholstered sofa on my truck, someone want to come over here and help me get it inside?
WaterGirl
@TaMara (BHF): You got yourself a beauty, that’s for sure.
gussie
Read your Sullivan: it’s the first step toward death panels for noncompliant makers.
Eich, man. It’s the banality of evil.
srv
More sinister. Obama needs more time to paint one of the 9/11 airliners like mh370 so they can replace the one he had shot down to cover up Benghazi.
Anton Sirius
I thought it was supposed to distract from Obamacare’s
successfailureerosion of our freedumz.srv
More sinister, bit the NSA won’t let me post the details from my iphone
cleek
Brendan Eich : a name nobody will remember in three weeks.
JGabriel
I’ve got a comment thread trolling conservatives over on the Telegraph article about psychopaths that Sooner linked to yessterday afternoon.
The problem is, well, it was more successful than I anticipated. I can’t keep up with the enraged wingnuts, and I have errands to run and a friend to meet later.
So, does anyone else wanna join in, troll wingnuts, and describe to them how they’re psychopaths?
Here are some examples, that I intended to get to, but didn’t, which you can use:
1) How Conservative are proud of losing the Congressional popular vote by 1.5 million votes, yet still retained control of the house through an un-democratic gerrymander. And how you can’t imagine anything more un-American than being proud of winning by cheating democracy. (Cons hate being called un-American and un-Patriotic, so focus on that.)
2) How liberals are responsible for the getting weekends off for workers, and abolishing child labor, while Republicans are still fighting against equal pay for women, while denying it’s a problem. (Because it’s smart to remind people that Republicans are actively working against their interests.)
3) How Ayn Rand is a psychopath who uses rape fantasy as a metaphor for capitalists relationship to the general populace. And yet they are proud of that too. (Just because it’s fun to insult Rand and watch the outrage.)
4) Ooh, here’s a good one: ask the wingnuts if they’re proud of how GW Bush trashed the economy, with special emphasis on the Sept. 2008 date of the crash, so they don’t have any wiggle room to blame it on Obama.
And I’m sure the everyone here can come up with plenty more examples of Conservative sociopathy.
Here’s the link again, if’n yer interested.
Edited to Add: If you need more motivation, scroll down the comments of the Telegraph article and read all of the comments calling liberals/democrats/et.al. psychopaths.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@TaMara (BHF): I have that exact same paperweight, only in gray! Does yours have the desk-clearing feature?
DougJ
@JGabriel:
Can’t get your link to work.
danimal
I still don’t understand why I should care about Eich. I remember lecture after lecture about the sanctity of the free market, which rights all wrongs and whose arc slowly bends towards justice. The free market worked in this case when a customer (OK Cupid) decided to redirect its business. No government interference, no fingerprints from the liberal media, just Adam Smith’s invisible hand shaping the market.
I suspect the real issue with the Eich resignation is the conservative aversion to accountability. Anytime conservatives are accountable for their actions, they squeal like stuck pigs. They want all the benefits of power, and none of the responsibility. It’s why Benghazi is a national issue and a bazillion injustices under Republican administrations have been swept under the rugs for decades.
That said, BENGHAZI will destroy the Hillary Clinton presidential run. BENGHAZI!!!!!!!
danimal
I still don’t understand why I should care about Eich. I remember lecture after lecture about the sanctity of the free market, which rights all wrongs and whose arc slowly bends towards justice. The free market worked in this case when a customer (OK Cupid) decided to redirect its business. No government interference, no fingerprints from the liberal media, just Adam Smith’s invisible hand shaping the market.
I suspect the real issue with the Eich resignation is the conservative aversion to accountability. Anytime conservatives are accountable for their actions, they squeal like stuck pigs. They want all the benefits of power, and none of the responsibility. It’s why Benghazi is a national issue and a bazillion injustices under Republican administrations have been swept under the rugs for decades.
That said, BENGHAZI will destroy the Hillary Clinton presidential run. BENGHAZI!!!!!!!
Punchy
CNN commentors tell me that the missing airplane had double-secret probationary China-bound nuclear cargo that was hijacked for use in Iran and Pakistan. I’m guessing Eich knows the location of this plane and they had to sack him in order to reestablish Mozilla’s bona fides with the Illuminati, the Elks, and Masons. Bricklayers are a fiesty bunch.
RandomMonster
Don’t be absurd — Benghazi is being covered up the leaking of the Senate report on CIA torture during the Bush administration.
ranchandsyrup
Shame shame on all of the 5th columnists and hippies.
ETA: The Clash’s first album was released today in 1977.
patroclus
Given Bork’s efforts in later life (such as “Slouching towards Gomorrah”), his overwhelming rejection by the Senate for the USSC was a significant historic accomplishment. “Borking” really means a comprehensive review of all of a nominee’s prior public writings and questioning him on the legal implications and how it would effect people’s lives rather than the strange definition used in right-wing circle jerks.
Liberating Benghazi from Qaddifi’s revenge was also an important achievement.
By contrast, merely removing an anti-gay bigot from an internet CEO position, while laudable, is not really that significant in terms of public policy. But it does show that being a contributor to the Prop H8 campaign has its downside. And I suspect that the contributors are becoming less proud of their efforts and less likely to do it again as time goes by.
Fuzzy
Maybe the new GOP rant will be nazi-gays go after job creators in Silicon Valley. Waiting for Issa and Bachman to weigh in with full vengance.
g
EVERYTHING is a distraction from Benghazi!!!!!!1111
JGabriel
@DougJ:
Shit, it’s too late for me to edit the post. Does this one work?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10737827/Psychopaths-how-can-you-spot-one.html#comment-1324067384
If not, then use this one: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10737827/Psychopaths-how-can-you-spot-one.html
… and scroll down. The Telegraph sorts by newest comment, so it should be near the top. I used the same userid that I use here.
.
srv
Snowman 20000 word opus on vanity fair!
Snowgasmic!
Mnemosyne
@danimal:
Why do you think they spend so much time complaining about how everyone else is lazy/irresponsible/jealous/etc?
It’s always projection. Always.
catclub
@Punchy: “China-bound nuclear cargo that was hijacked for use in Iran and Pakistan.”
Nope. In Benghazi. The nuking from space is to wipe out the evidence. For sure.
NotMax
At a bit of a loss as to why the U.S. military refused to aid in confirming the initial findings.
Roger Moore
@Kay (not the front-pager):
Mine is in black and has typing assist rather than desk clearing.
Higgs Boson's Mate
“Over Macho Grande?”
“I’ll never get over Macho Grande.”
Pete
Is it irresponsible to ask? It’s irresponsible NOT to ask.
Bubblegum Tate
Is Eich about to get terrorized by Obama’s Muslim Black Panther IRS? Clearly!
Trollhattan
Oh Fox, what woud we do for entertainment without you?
Fox & Friends host Heather Childers, a self-proclaimed “huge sports fan,” looked directly into the camera and said, with poise and confidence, “The UConn Huskies are the 2014 NAACP national champs.” Then she smiled, not a wince, like a pro.
One guess only as to Heather’s hair color.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/fox-news-host-congratulates-naacp-champs.html
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
Borking means having the Senate take the “advice and consent” obligation seriously rather than acting as a giant rubber stamp for the President. It seems especially important when the person being appointed is not going to be the President’s subordinate but have a lifetime appointment to a third, coequal branch of government.
Bob In Portland
Why no mention of the fistfight in the Ukrainian parliament?
And is anyone surprised that Kiev is using mercenaries to quell the independence movement in eastern Ukraine?
negative 1
@Punchy: I feel as though that could be the most fun experiment ever, if someone (I don’t) has the stomach for it — for one month, get all of your news only from newspaper online comment sections and then report back. It would be like a game of telephone, except that everyone playing is a brain-damaged racist.
burnspbesq
It’s a way to distract from the revelation (hardly a surprise) that Issa has been cherry-picking the evidence related to the IRS 501(c)(4) organization screening non-scandal.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: We are all Gehlen Organization members. I thought you knew that
BethanyAnne
@patroclus: Well, I know one person in favor of Eich’s fate: Andrew Sullivan: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2008/11/18/prop-8-and-cali/
Oh, wait… https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/452530939193593856
burnspbesq
@danimal:
And there’s the problem, from the wingnut perspective. Wingnuts hate free markets, because free markets aren’t rigged in their favor. High-frequency front-running is the wingnut nirvana: no risk and guaranteed returns. Oh, wait, that’s a felony violation of the securities laws? If our guy gets to pick the Attorney General and the head of the SEC, who cares?
Gin & Tonic
Another afternoon with Comrade Bob coming by to spout the latest in Kremlin propaganda.
The “mercenary” fiction and its genesis is very well documented in this article (scroll down to the 0100GMT marker.)
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Another afternoon with Comrade Bob coming by to spout the latest in Kremlin propaganda.
You can always count on Moscow Bob to excuse Russia’s scheming to grab more of Ukraine’s territory.
And yet, he’s been strangely silent on the Tatar’s calls for autonomy after the Russian annexation of Crimea. BIP’s pretty selective about who gets “self-determination”.
Howard Beale IV
@BethanyAnne: Leave it to Betty to find the real truth-after all, she’s America’s Best Christian!
Origuy
@Bob In Portland: You mean this?
Big whoop. A Communist says something stupid and a couple of rightists overreact. Clearly justifies a Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine. Also what Gin & Tonic said.
PurpleGirl
@TaMara (BHF): What a beautiful, floofy paperweight.
Mike E
@Cacti:
No, Pravda Bob always has a quick reason why they are not worthy in his zero sum game of trolling.
eta DougJ, is this what you were going for with your “Thousand Trolls of Light” post the other day? These aren’t the trolls you’re looking for…
Bob In Portland
Well, folks, you bought Ukraine. Enjoy it.
Tatars? 200,000 and I’m guessing most of them will be happy in Crimea with a much higher standard of living than Ukraine. Like those 8000 Crimean military who switched sides and joined the Russian army. Who knows? Maybe some of them are Tatar.
And then maybe Brighton Beach goes to Russia.
cckids
@TaMara (BHF): What a sweetie! He (he, right?) looks a little like my own paperweight.
Edit to add: Mine does prefer boxes to lighter papers.
Bob In Portland
Has Balloon Juice had a blog on Seymour Hersh’s piece on sarin gas in Syria? That was a war that a number of you could get behind last summer. Now it turns out that Putin saved you from lining up on the wrong side in that one.
I’m always interested in what is and isn’t news here. No one here apparently wants to admit to the Svobodans fist fighting on the floor of their parliament.
The people who overthrew the government in Kiev were freedom fighters and people who object to the overthrow of Yanukovich, who was elected mostly by the support of eastern Ukraine, are rioters, a mob and Soviet agents.
You are sure there are no mercenaries working for the coupsters in Kiev because why would there be mercenaries? When has the US ever used mercenaries?
I realize that for some (Gin and Tonic) this is probably a lifelong dream and no one wants it to rain on his parade (even if there are people in the parade with swastika armbands). Others here just want to have a good hippie/Commie-punching. Do so at your own peril.
America is the inheritor of Germany’s fascism, and it’s been put to good use in giving our corporations control of the world. Not only did our intelligence services absorb the Nazi spy system, it’s been overthrowing governments and installing fascist regimes around the world. No matter who is sitting in the White House the drums continue to roll. It was that way when the Dulleses ran our foreign affairs and it’s been that way since the coup in the US (JFK’s removal).
Being smug on the subject requires you to bury your head, and that’s fine. The media will help you with that. How many Vietnams, Iraqs, Indonesias, El Salvadors, Guatemalas, Nicaraguas, Chiles have to happen until you notice what America has become?
Bob In Portland
Consortium News.
They’re also Communist agents. Isn’t this fun? It’s just like the McCarthy Era.
My god, what does it take for any of you to look in the mirror?
Morbo
@Bob In Portland: LOLOLOLOLOL, I was waiting for that. Good job, Doug, I was about to ask if prying that Hersh piece out of someone was your intent.
Bob In Portland
@Origuy: “A communist says something stupid…”
Because, in your world of constricted logic there cannot be consequences of coups the US stages with fascists. It’s stupid, right? For example, those hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in Latin America who disappeared after US-supported rightwing coups. No connection. And that was thirty years ago.
Now I suspect that Russia really doesn’t have to do anything much except wait for Kerry to come to the table. Ukraine is going to collapse economically thanks to the oligarchs and the German bankers. The fascists and the cutting edge intelligentsia here at Balloon Juice will blame all that happens on those darned Russians because they say stupid things and do stupid things and Putin is crazy. Crazy like Osama bin Laden was crazy, like Allende was crazy, like Castro is crazy, like Saddam was crazy, like the Taliban are crazy, like Ghaddafi was crazy.
You bought it with your stupidity and blind patriotism. Enjoy it.
Bob In Portland
@Morbo: I have always suspected that Hersh works for someone inside the intelligence community all the way back to his coverup reporting on My Lai (compare it to Valentines’ THE PHOENIX PROGRAM), but whoever his master is I still read and weigh the evidence. No need for your to do so, eh Morbo? When a source is discredited by your own censors there is no need to read.
So are you saying that it had to be that crazy Assad with the poison gas and not Al-Nusra? Because? Because your trusted friends in the media told you not to believe Hersh now. After all, he got it wrong with Abu Ghraib, right?
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Tatars? 200,000 and I’m guessing most of them will be happy in Crimea with a much higher standard of living than Ukraine.
So, what you’re saying is, they’ll greet the Russians as liberators?
Gin & Tonic
Meanwhile, the courageous pro-Russian freedom fighters in Luhansk have taken over a government building, set mines and taken 60 hostages. Because that’s how the anti-fascist freedom fighters roll, I guess.
But some yahoo hung a confederate flag in Kiev city hall, so clearly both sides do it.
Cacti
@Gin & Tonic:
Meanwhile, the courageous pro-Russian freedom fighters in Luhansk have taken over a government building, set mines and taken 60 hostages. Because that’s how the anti-fascist freedom fighters roll, I guess.
BIP’s problem is that he still thinks the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact applies to Russia and its relationship to eastern Europe in 2014.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Well, it’s kind of late to greet anyone. The Russians have been there for awhile. And would you believe that the US’s piece in the region, Turkey, is working on the Tatars’ unrest, although it’s hard to imagine that they’ll want to go back to Kiev after the IMF puts the screws on them. Or do you think that the business of Ukraine will blossom under the IMF’s fiscal brakes? And of course the US and its client states would never interfere in anyone’s civil tranquility, would they?
By the way, what’s the purpose of the US spending billions on overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine? To extend democracy to the Ukrainians? This is a genuine question. What, Cacti, do you think are America’s interests in pushing NATO to the borders of Russia?
The best you can do is ignore seventy years of history in order join in cold war mongering. Great. We were a right in Vietnam, Iraq, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, the Congo and all those other places, right? So we couldn’t be lied to by the New York Times, now, could we?
burnspbesq
@Bob In Portland:
You seem to have uncritically bought what Hersh is selling, which is a pretty foolish thing to do. Which, come to think of it, makes it unsurprising and wholly in character.
If you want to defend your foolishness, you can start by identifying some Turkish interest that is advanced by doing what Hersh alleges they did. Good luck with that.
Bob In Portland
@burnspbesq: Did you read what I wrote about Hersh? Did you read Robert Parry’s analysis of the sarin gas?
Hersh’s book on JFK, along with Chomsky’s, could have been printed on the presses in the basement of Langley. With that in mind, do you think that the German intelligence ship’s intercepts off the Lebanese coast are enough for you to go to war? Are you ready to join with al Qaeda to kill the Armenians in Syria?
Or doesn’t bombing count?
burnspbesq
@Bob In Portland:
I don’t suppose you’d care to offer some evidence in support of that allegation.
Cacti
@burnspbesq:
I don’t suppose you’d care to offer some evidence in support of that allegation.
Link to poorly-sourced, obscure blog post in 3, 2, 1…
Bob In Portland
@burnspbesq: Vicky Nuland’s phone call. I guess you must have missed that in the extensive coverage in the western media.
J R in WV
Bob, in Portland, how old are you? I other words, when were you born, what era did you grow up in, where was you youth mis-spent?
I ask this because I’m curious as to which shaping events of my youth we share. Cuban missile crisis? Bay of Pigs? Sputnik? You mention the “death” of JFK… how old were you for that seminal event?
Did you recoil in disbelief when Lee Harvey was shot while in custody? Do you think there were moles in the DPD who set Jack Ruby up to kill Lee?
I will never forget hearing my Mom scream when Ruby shot Oswald. Not a shout or a cry, a scream. She wasn’t even a Democrat, but she hated them for killing Jack Kennedy.