In an emailed comment, however, Paul elaborated by saying: “If I were President, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”
As Benen points out, the lesser Paul was pissing all over interventionists last week in a WSJ editorial. This week, he’s calling for a war in the Middle East as part of the pile on over Obama’s comment about the lack of a strategy in Syria.
Belafon
And what if ISIS is no threat to our national security?
Pogonip
The puppy kicker was fired.
max
the lesser Paul was pissing all over interventionists last week in a WSJ editorial.
He really wants to be President. Tsk.
“If I were President, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”
Obama doesn’t need the auth for this – ISIS is the degenerate mutant offspring of Al-Qaeda, so they should be covered by the AUMF. It’s also really hard to ‘destroy’ a terrorist group. You could destroy the quasi-army they’ve built up, but ISIS would still be around.
max
[‘Foreign policy posturing is puke-inducing, and that’s when it comes from Democrats. This stuff is just pro wrestling writ large.’]
ericblair
Libertarian isolationism isn’t “we will do more harm than good intervening in the world, so as a matter of policy we shouldn’t.” It’s really, “I don’t give a shit what happens anywhere else until it affects me in some way, then I’ll do whatever I feel like out of revenge or fear because mememe.”
I guess he didn’t give a shit about brown people blowing up other brown people, but once he saw a white American guy getting murdered on the teevee that was that.
c u n d gulag
If he’s hawkish, and doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, then I’m left with the conclusion that this mop-topped fop’s Libertarianism apparently stops at legalizing pot.
c u n d gulag
If he’s hawkish, and doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, then I’m left with the conclusion that this mop-topped fop’s Libertarianism apparently stops at legalizing pot.
c u n d gulag
If he’s hawkish, and doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, then I’m left with the conclusion that this mop-topped fop’s Libertarianism apparently stops at legalizing pot.
FlipYrWhig
Deep down, Rand Paul doesn’t believe in anything other than his own specialness. Like most libertarians, if not all.
chopper
and what is this particular line of reasoning, eraserhead?
FlipYrWhig
The comment as it stands is actually fine by me. Presidents _should_ want Congress to do things in the area of war and national defense. The real question is whether Paul-while-he-is-NOT-President would vote to authorize the use of force at the behest of the President. This is an unresponsive non-answer to that.
Danny
Great, I’ll harass you instead of John! Pls mistermix, pls pls pleeeeeease tweet Greenwald and ask his take on that one! I sooooooo need to see this.
Tommy
I sure hope Obama stays strong in the face of everybody calling for another war.
Betty Cracker
Like a clock gone Galt, the tribble-topped presidential aspirant is right about one thing: If the US is going to continue to engage in bombing runs against ISIS, the president ought to go before Congress, make his case and request authorization for it. Sure, the AUMF could be construed to cover it, but we all know (Obama certainly does) what a screw job the AUMF was/is. Part of rolling back the Bush clusterfuck ought to be jettisoning the cons he used, not appropriating them for ostensibly more noble purposes.
Botsplainer
@c u n d gulag:
My recollection is that his libertarianism isn’t even about legalizing pot – he’d be noncommittal about the states that legalize it, but he’d also be noncommittal about Alabama enacting the death penalty for possession.
His liberty is all about the liberty of robber barons ordering society the way they see fit and according to their prejudices, then uniting with other warlords to enact it as a national whole.
Baby Doc is a fascist. His Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (Tonton Macoutes) just happen to be white conservative Christian activists, because when fascism is installed here, it’ll be draped in a Gadsden flag, carrying a cross/gun combo, and singing “Ah’m Proud to be ‘Murkin” while doffing a tricorn hat at blond girls with great tits and apple bottoms.
srv
You people don’t understand the complexities of Libertarian thought. It’s not flip-flopping.
All Obama had to do was find some allies.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
Marry me.
Punchy
Why am I supposed to care what Paul the Lesser has to say?
Shakezula
I wish Obama would, if only to listen to the glubbering after the Repukes who’ve screaming he should DO SOMETHING (besides the bombing, I guess) realized the spiked ball was on their side of the net.
Belafon
@srv: Which allies? The ones he’s talking to?
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: But, like I said earlier, this is just procedural gamesmanship and meta-argument. Let’s say Obama _did_ do that. (Remember, he requested it in Syria, and Congress flinched, so no go in Syria.) How would Paul vote? It’s kind of rich to say “Obama should request authorization which of course I would reject, and that will show how I’m the man he fails to be.”
Hal
Mitt Romney: if I were President…
Rand Paul: if I were President…
Olive Oyl…http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hUxPHJ36u0w
samiam
Buh…but he said he doesn’t like drones once and another time he said he doesn’t like the police to have military equipment.
Of course idiots like Cole believe he has some good ideas because of that. They seem incapable of understanding that he is just pandering to whatever audience he wants to appeal to at that particular time.
catclub
@chopper:
Saddam’s WMDs, yellowcake, aluminum tubes, mobile chemical weapons labs, bioweapons flown into the US ‘homeland’. But with more knives.
Redshift
Rand fits Krugman’s description of Newt Gingrich – “a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.” He jumps on the shallow wingnut outrage over the “plan” sound bite and declares that if he were president, he’d have a plan, as if the hard part is deciding to have a plan, not actually coming up with one.
Botsplainer
@samiam:
Unless they’re being used to chase down urban youths, then he’s for them.
El Caganer
So this is the second time Paul has had a conversion on the road to Damascus? Well, I’ll be damned.
Tommy
What is the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? We keep arming people and bombing countries and the result seems to be same thing each time. Complete failure.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think Obama did actually request authority to strike in Syria. He nearly did, but then things changed quickly with the nerve gas agreement(!) brokered by Russia.
Bobby B.
If I were king of the foreeeeeesssssstt
Cervantes
@Tommy:
War is not the answer. (Stop me if you’ve heard this before.)
Redshift
@Hal: Yeah, if you start with “if ” you can put pretty much anything as the conclusion and it doesn’t make the truth of the statement any different.
srv
@Belafon: All those FSA unicorns. Obama can’t do anything right.
Redshift
@catclub: No, he did. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved it, but the chickenshit Republican Congress never even scheduled as vote.
Tommy
@Cervantes: Agreed. But it seems like it is our default for most problems in this world.
dmsilev
I have, through much effort and no little personal risk, obtained video footage of Rand Paul describing how he formulates his reaction to Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHash5takWU
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I agree 100% that this is just gamesmanship by Paul. But still, the right thing to do is to request authorization from the hive of scum and villainy that The People, in their infinite wisdom, elected as their representatives.
catclub
@Redshift: Yep. I was mistaken.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: I do not trust Congress to do anything right at this point. But I also don’t want any president, even one I voted for twice, to just decide on their own to start a war.
Cervantes
@Tommy: Just goes to show we’re not as smart as we like to think we are.
srv
@Redshift: General Zinni was selling his book on Diane Rhem yesterday and for the most part pragmatic, only negative on Obama for being as directionless as any other post-Cold War president.
But his book is premised on a speech Newt gave when he was in the Army War College. Newt said generals should always ask politicians “And then what?” after a victorious battle plan.
Apparently, Newt did not get his own memo.
raven
@Tommy: He’s settin them fuckers up.
schrodinger's cat
What is Rand Paul’s stance on immigration? All of the Republican presidential contenders except Jeb Bush have gone hard right on this issue. They are doubling down on alienating everyone except for the rich and resentful.
Tommy
@srv: My father was a professor at the Army War College. We talk military strategy. He will often note our military is really good at breaking shit. Not so good at nation building. He says that isn’t the fault of our military. They are not structured for that task. Why they often fail.
Eric U.
I don’t think he will ever get anywhere near the republican nomination for preznit. Republicans are used to doing a head snapping about-face on subjects of great national importance, but I think Rand is pushing the limits. Mostly because he seems to sound reasonable occasionally. That is unforgivable.
@Tommy: I think the fact that the U.S. military is no good at nation building was pretty well understood by the military after Vietnam. That’s why I always hate it when that is part of the plan. Of course, I was in the Air Force, so our military education was not afraid to point and laugh at the failure of our ground forces. There really isn’t a service that is better prepared to break things than the Air Force, although the Navy is pretty good at it too.
shortstop
No one beats mistermix’s post titles.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: Before he decided it wanted to be president it was actually pretty “liberal” on immigration policy. He is running away from that now as fast as he can.
Suzanne
@Bobby B.:
Win.
The thing that just gets under my skin the most is the idea, held by many libertarians and conservatives, that the only thing that needs to happen for human happiness and fulfillment is FREEDOM, and freedom is defined as A LACK OF RULES.
Real freedom would actually mean choices, and the social support to enable those options. A society that truly supported the pursuit of happiness for everyone doesn’t give poor people the choice between manning the fryers and driving a tank.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
if i were obama i would be a bit happier with the idea of going before congress if the place wasn’t full of spiteful dbags who would gladly hamstring any attempt at a military solution to a serious problem somewhere because the guy cannot be allowed to succeed, ever.
seriously, these guys would deliberately cripple an attempt to deflect a meteor headed toward earth in order to deny obama any sort of ‘win’.
Cacti
Rand Paul is also the person who decried the militarization of law enforcement, while also saying he wouldn’t care if a drone killed someone who robbed $50 from a liquor store.
He has no core principles beyond a desire to be POTUS.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
‘not present’.
Hal
Rachel maddow has been making the point for some time now that Republicans in Congress do not want their fingerprints all over an authorization of war. Obama might be a dictator they have to reign in, but all of a sudden he doesn’t need their approval. Just go for it!
Also slightly off topic; Rand can’t run for President and stay a senator in Kentucky and yesterday Maddow had a clip showing 63 % of Kentucky voters say no to changing that law. Her main point was whether Paul is a true contender for President, or like his father, simply in the business of running for President.
Tommy
@chopper:
There are many things that piss me off in this world. But I think at the top of the list is Republicans, as you noted, would cripple this nation before giving Obama a “win.” I often note that I couldn’t stand George Bush, but I wasn’t actively hoping he failed. I mean what kind of person actively hopes for a president to fail in their job?
shortstop
@Cacti:
And in that, he is strangely like Romney.
Shakezula
@Redshift: Wasn’t this Johnny Ejectomatic’s spiel for the financial crisis? Or Iraq? Or both?
He had a cunning plan, but he couldn’t tell us what it was until he was in the White House.
JaneE
Granted that the ISIS folks are monsters and totally insane, countries expand their territory by military force all the time. New states have to start somewhere, and where better than places where there is already a large percentage of people receptive to a new government? Now that they have picked up real military hardware and considerable acreage, they want the world to recognize them as a real country. Why should they be any more observant of international laws than any other country? They are not a party to any human rights treaties. We know that the minority populations in the territory they hold want them out, because they are the ones being slaughtered. What about the Sunni majority? Are they supportive or not?
Whatever America does or does not do about ISIS, the civilian populations bear most of the casualties, becoming refugees if they are lucky, and dead if they are not. The major difference is who is doing more of the killing, them or us. If we can identify ISIS troops or leadership, I am all for droning them to perdition, but even then, chances are that we will kill almost as many of the people we want to help. I think it would be more effective to get the major Muslim leaders to condemn and issue fatwas against them and anyone who fights for them, but I don’t know if that can happen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chopper: an actual vote on foreign policy is, I think, John Boehner’s greatest fear. I have a hunch he has a weirdly delusional idea of his place in history (he is said to have thought a Grand Bargain would earn him a reputation as a great Speaker) alongside Rayburn and O’Neill– now he just likes the fancy office), and he doesn’t want his name associated with Iraq Debacle II.
He is in a lot of ways a mini-Mitt, totally disinterested in foreign policy, and all his ideas about domestic policy based on his personal, tunnel-visioned resentments about how hard it was to get rich. He’s nowhere near as rich as Willard, of course, but unlike Willard, Boehner, as I understand it, really did inherit nothing.
Cacti
@JaneE:
I’m still trying to figure out who the “good guys” are whose regional interests we should be supporting.
Is it the theocratic human rights sewer of Iran, the theocratic human rights sewer of Saudi Arabia, the military dictatorship of Syria, etc.
Amir Khalid
@JaneE:
If major Muslim leader were indeed to issue fatwas against groups like ISIS, (as has been done with al-Qa’idah itself, although you wouldn’t know abut it from the western media) — well, if a tree falls in the forest and the media doesn’t cover it, did it actually happen?
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: See, you guys need some charismatic figurehead, like Pope Francis.
Tommy
@Cacti:
I wonder the same thing. I am not saying all the people in the Middle East are “bad.” I don’t think that for a second. But it seems to me most of those in power are not people I’d invite over for dinner. ISIS is an evil bunch of people. But is Assad any better?
srv
@JaneE:
The thing is, the tribal loyalties/leadership that held things together in the past are done now. We broke that in Iraq, and civil war in Syria is breaking it there. Saudi Arabia has an exponential number of teens – they served as great fodder for USSR vs Afghanistan, but now there are a lot more of them and they’re social mobile.
ISIS is fighting the Counter Insurgency war we were too afraid to do. We called it COIN, but no American took off his armor and lived with the clan – they went back to their castle FOB every night and had Taco Bell.
ISIS is building a whole new ideology and hierarchy on the ash heap we left. Sykes Picot is dead and they’re taking the time to ISISplain it to us.
If we courtesy bomb them, they’ll just evolve into something worse and more effective (the Likud model, but for them it’s a feature).
El Caganer
@Cacti: It certainly wouldn’t hurt if the US figured out what its own interests were first.
Huggy Bear
@Tommy: The kind of person who invests all of their self worth in their Ideological affiliation. If the country goes down the tubes, then they were right, and that is the most important thing. Conversely, if the country doesn’t go down the tubes, then everything they believe about the world comes crashing down, which is a far greater tragedy than anything else that could happen.
For those types, every choice and event is binary, and every time something happens that doesn’t comport with their preference either didn’t really happen or is actually awful and they’re the only ones smart enough to see it.
A great experiment would be to ask one of those doctrinaire types to compare GDP and job growth during the Eisenhower and JFK/Johnson administrations. See how they deal with the unpossibleness of it all.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker:
True, but Paul doesn’t deserve any credit for saying that–that’s just a truism about the President, the Congress, and the Constitution. Much more important than what Hypothetical Pres. Paul would do is what Current Sen. Paul would do if Current Pres. Obama did what Hypothetical Pres. Paul would do. He should have to do the two-step that then-Sen. Kerry did about voting for the Pres. to have the _authority_ to do something, how it intersects with what he as Pres. would do with the authority once given, and so forth. Otherwise he’s just reciting Schoolhouse Rock-style boilerplate about process.
Tommy
@Huggy Bear: That is an intelligent, basic, insightful analysis. Had not really thought if it in those terms. But I think you might be spot on. Most of my family members are Republicans. They are always stunned that I will openly admit I was wrong about this or that. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life.
Danny
@Suzanne:
Very true, and the great irony is that this idea is pretty much the philosophical antithesis of conservatism proper. They’ve become a strange hybrid of religious right wing hippies.
Belafon
@Huggy Bear:
I believe that was the theme of last Saturday’s Doctor Who episode.
Mike in NC
@Cacti:
Let’s stop pretending the idiot with the worst hairdo this side of Donald Trump has a serious shot at getting nominated by the insane GOP. I’m calling it right now: CRUZ / SANFORD 2016!
Betty Cracker
@chopper: All true. And I think there are situations where it makes sense for a president so hamstrung to bypass Congress to address an emergency situation, which the powers of the office enable him to do. You could make the argument that airstrikes to break the ISIS siege of that mountaintop or drive the nut-bars away from the Mosul dam were eligible for unilateral action because of the urgency of those particular situations. But for a longer-term military commitment, the president — any president — should be seeking Congressional consent. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
rikyrah
The attack on bad teacher tenure laws is actually an attack on black professionals
By Andre M. Perry August 28
After the Vergara v. California decision in California’s state Supreme Court, which held that key job protections for teachers are unconstitutional, anti-union advocates everywhere began spawning copycat lawsuits. But while reformers may genuinely want to fix education for everyone, their efforts will only worsen diversity in the teaching corps. The truth is that an attack on bad teacher tenure laws (and ineffective teachers in general) is actually an attack on black professionals. If theVergara clones succeed, black children will lose effective teachers and the black community will lose even more middle-class jobs.
Black workers are most likely to hold public sector union jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among the major ethnic groups, blacks (13.6 percent) represent the highest percentage of union members among the total number of workers (whites are 11 percent; Asians are 9.4 percent; and Hispanics are 9.4 percent), and the highest unionization rates among all professions were in the education services occupations (35.3 percent). In 26 of the 48 jurisdictions (states plus the District of Columbia) where at least some black and some white teachers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, blacks are more likely to be covered by agreements than whites. This is the case in California, where the Vergara decision originated. Blacks are more likely to teach in urban areas in many states, and so are more likely to be covered by collective bargaining. Therefore, black teachers have much at stake in the Vergara decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/28/an-attack-on-bad-teacher-tenure-laws-is-actually-an-attack-on-black-professionals/
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Have you read V. S. Naipaul and his commentary on Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia? FWIW, I think overall he is an insufferable and a pompous ass but some times does make astute observations, at least this is true about the stuff he has written about India. I don’t know enough about either Malaysia or Indonesia to judge what he has to say.
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: Really? I just checked his Senate record and found that he voted against the comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate last year. He is the same as all of them, a fear mongering blowhard.
rikyrah
Breaking: Theodore Wafer sentenced to 17 years for fatally shooting RenishaMcBride.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s…
DETROIT (AP) — A suburban Detroit man was sentenced Wednesday to at least 17 years in prison for killing an unarmed woman who appeared on his porch before dawn.
Theodore Wafer was convicted of second-degree murder in the Nov. 2 death of Renisha McBride, 19. Before getting his sentence, the Dearborn Heights man apologized to McBride’s family, saying he killed a woman who was “too young to leave this world.”
“I will carry that guilt and sorrow forever,” said Wafer, often pausing to control his emotions.
Wafer was convicted last month after a nine-day trial that centered on whether the 55-year-old had a reasonable and honest belief that his safety was in peril. He testified that he was awakened by pounding on his doors and shot McBride because he feared for his life. But a jury rejected his claim of self-defense
flukebucket
@Mike in NC:
No way in hell. GOWDY / GOHMERT 2016
It just rolls off of the tongue doesn’t it?
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
I agree that V.S. Naipaul is by reputation an insufferable, pompous ass. As I recall, Paul Theroux once said that was why he and Naipaul were no longer friends. I understand that he doesn’t think kindly of us Muslims in the Malay world. But his best-known book on Muslims is banned here, and I have not had a chance to read it.
Tommy
@rikyrah: There are a lot of sad stories out there, but this has to be close to the top of the list. Poor young lady wrecks her car. Knocks on his door looking for help and gets killed. I got emotional about this story, as I bet many did, because I hope if I need help I can knock on somebodies door and not get shoot.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: If I remember it correctly, he does draw a distinction between the homegrown version of Islam and the Wahhabi evangelist version and he is somewhat more sympathetic to the former.
His interviews with the Shiite clerics in Qom were nuanced and sympathetic.
sharl
ATTENTION, Black Twitterati! You have been honored by a decision at USC Annenberg Innovation Lab to study you.
Behold the team assembled for this effort.
Yeah it’s OT, but I’m pretty sure Ayn Randy would see no issues here.
Mike E
@srv: ISISplainin’…Good’ern. But, you’re fundamentally wrong about that artificial construct, dating back nearly 100 years ago, held together by bailing wire and a small but brutal dictator, AKA Iraq.
Srsly, pick up a book or sumptin’!
srv
The Obama Boom!
S&P 3000 Baby!
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig: The Libertarian philosophy is a rationalization to justify adults behaving like screaming three year olds: “MINE MINE MINE!”
Belafon
@srv:
Lousy Soshulist.
Amir Khalid
Completely off-topic (sorry) but this facepalm-worthy marketing campaign by my country’s national airline, which has been in the news quite a bit this year, probably deserves to be mentioned on Balloon Juice in some fashion.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: Wow cringe worthy. But as somebody that worked 15 years at an ad agency I will just note that often you try to do the right thing and you have an epic fail. Something you spent countless hours thinking about and you miss the obvious.
srv
@Mike E: Good luck clinging to your old paradigms, maybe you can send some bailing wire to the WH to keep Iraq and Ukraine together.
Just One More Canuck
@sharl: Irony dies yet another death
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: from the LATimes on 17-32 year sentence in the murder of Renisha McBride:
Aside from Detroit’s longtime racial polarization, I have always wondered if Mr. Wafer was a habitual Fox News Channel watcher, or listened constantly to rightwing radio, and if that accounted for his extreme fear, mistrust, and lack of judgment.
If that can be proven, I would love to see FNC, or whatever outlet spewing fear and hatred, sued — in civil court, if need be — for the McBride family’s loss of Renisha’s companionship and potential, plus damages for their pain and suffering, if that’s allowable under Michigan law.
Freedom of the press is not freedom to yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre, but that’s how Fox et al. make their bucks.
Fox profits from selling — on purpose, by design and outright repetition — a climate where their viewers are overterrified and overstimulated, and some are shooting others — especially young black men — more frequently than would happen without FNC in the mix.
It could be local news, granted.
I think this guy was afraid, but it was not reasonable fear, and he is guilty of murder.
Elizabelle
@sharl:
What could go wrong? Yikes.
Mike E
@srv: Paradigms… hell, I don’t got two nickels to rub together!
I blame Obama.
cckids
@Redshift:
As Terry Prachett says :”Plans are what people follow to avoid having to think”.
Fits here.
Frankensteinbeck
Guys, I live in Kentucky and was here for Rand’s election. Rand Paul has been on both sides of every issue. Don’t look for consistency. He’s not even flip-flopping. He just says whatever he thinks his audience at that moment wants to hear. I know, you’re used to people who try to maintain plausible deniability. Rand Paul doesn’t. He just tells the lie in front of him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip: Good.
Amir Khalid
This poor woman, trying to get some rest between part-time shifts at three different Dunkin Donuts, died on America’s Labor Day.
Waynski
If we’re going to bomb, I say we start with Kennebunkport.
Belafon
@Elizabelle: As much as we like to quote it, freedom to yell fire has never been challenged in court. What has been affirmed is the right to say anything short of slander, which would be impossible to find in this case.
As for the wall, people really ought to ask China how well one of those worked.
Villago Delenda Est
@Waynski: Isn’t the Rmoney family compound not far from there, in NH? Should be easy to strike both on the same sortie.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: Her legacy is that she will be my goto anytime someone talks about how much harder the rich work.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Well, the wall did work, for the most part, until technology got past it. That and organized barbarians, not unorganized random mobs.
The Mongols were pretty good at the organization game.
maya
@Amir Khalid: From the article:
I’ll keep my bucket list short:
Drop me off anyplace in ISISrael, or whatever it’s called. That is, if you be headin’ that way.
Think I got a winner there?
Poopyman
@Frankensteinbeck: And it has worked! Ain’t our democracy great?
sharl
@sharl: Aaaand, the snark as started, with the hashtag #blacktwitterstudyresults
Steeplejack
@cckids:
Hey, went to Bachi Burger last night on your recommendation. Very good! Had the black and green burger and the pepper-garlic fries.
Trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Everything I need to know about fake-eye doc Rand can be summarized by the head-stomp as performed by his entourage. Any sentient being who thinks Rand Paul can ever be a transformative leader because of the tiny smattering of issues he pretends to be on the “right” side of, is both a fool and surpremly gullible. He is a dangerous fanatic. Nothing more, nothing less.
ETA–must be weird to know Rand Paul is your second-worst senator.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Paul wants to declare war on a terrorist group, huh?
Trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
You have actual book bans? Best be careful, lest you become the Texas of Southeast Asia.
john b
@sharl: that tweet conspicuously leaves out the black woman who is the first “project owner” listed.
sharl
@john b: She wasn’t on that page a while back, but I see her name and photo are there now.
Good corrective action, Innovation Lab! (seriously)
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
There was a more specific dispute between them than that. It was not about tone.
Frankensteinbeck
@Trollhattan:
Hopefully not for long. Everything *I* need to know about Rand I learned when he gave a speech the night he got the nomination about how he would never tack to the center, and then gave a speech the next morning about how he was a moderate and had nothing to do with the Tea Party or extremists.
@Poopyman:
Winning a Senator seat in Kentucky as a Republican is not exactly a high bar. With the racists that dominate this state going completely bugfuck about Obama, he still struggled to win the race.
Cervantes
@Trollhattan:
By size that would be Indonesia. By oil wealth per capita it might be Brunei. By sheer governmental bloody-mindedness, which is, I guess, your query, it might be Burma.
Kylroy
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, the Great Wall was designed to prevent military invasions, and it was reasonably successful on that front. Nobody (at least nobody I or the mainstream media listen to) thinks Mexico is going to stage a military invasion of the US, so the Great Wall is the wrong comparison for a theoretical US-Mexico “Border Fence”.
Said fence would instead be designed to keep out small numbers of people who are trying to cross as unobtrusively as possible. So the proper comparison is the Berlin Wall.
Amir Khalid
@Trollhattan:
Why, yes we do. Doesn’t every country?
Cervantes
@Belafon:
Sorry, what is the argument or point here? (Thanks.)
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@rikyrah: Well, duh, you didn’t think it was a coincidence that public sector unions have been under such relentless attack since the 1970’s, did you?
It’s always stuck in their craw that “those people” could have decent jobs and fair pay. Always.
That’s also why they hate the Post Office with a fire of a thousand suns.
ETA: or public sector jobs with public sector hiring requirements, ESPECIALLY FEDERAL–outsource everything! weee, closely held firm, owner’s idiot nephew just got hired, yes, yes!!
raven
You think Paul is a case?
The Rev. Hice, who, barring a Second Coming-grade interruption in the affairs of humanity, will be elected to Congress in November, is paying attention to the night sky to determine his Middle East policy. Turns out that the Middle East’s central crisis isn’t complicated at all! It’s just that everyone has been distracted by books, history, international law and notions of justice. Nah, just peep the moon, and that’ll tell you everything you need to know.
john b
@sharl: ah. better late than never, i guess
john b
double post
sharl
@john b: Yeah, it looks like a prematurely released announcement; Dayna Chatman is, I think, looking to have a chat with whomever did that (maybe a good idea to take away the keys too). And Ms. Chatman does confirm that she pitched this study.
Hopefully she’ll post on what happened; depending on the details, it may in fact serve as an(other) example of why Black folks and other unprivileged groups need social media outside of big corporate-owned entities.
Bill Arnold
@raven:
That is a little depressing.
Bill Arnold
@srv:
He was on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC (NPR) this morning too. I only caught about 5 minutes of it but he sounded reasonably thoughtful and pragmatic.
Bill Arnold
It was an indication that (possibly) the question about what the US should do about ISIS was being given some deep consideration.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: While this doesn’t do a darn thing for Renisha McBride, maybe this verdict will give the next trigger happy person some pause before they snuff out the life of the next potential victim.
And it’s a hell of a lot better than getting off scott-free, which is what seems to be happening all too frequently.
Score one for the blindfolded lady.
Bob In Portland
Instead of using Putin as the evil bad man/mad man at the top of the menu, could we instead reanimate some of the evil bad-madmen of the past? It will help BJers think more clearly about events in Ukraine without that level of propagandized blather.
raven
@Bill Arnold: It’s not even a contest.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
One man deserves the credit
One man deserves the blame
And Vladmir Vladimirovich Putin is his name!
Elie
Interesting column from Tom Friedman – here, with whom I often do not agree or read.
Also, this one gives an interesting perspective on where we are and why we are where we are here.
Interested in any of y’alls thoughts
Elie
I’ve been having some problems submitting comments – this is a test
jl
“destroy ISIS militarily” is a nice goal that I can get with. Did he say anything about what might be effective strategy and tactics, aka, any ideas on how put the bell on that cat?
Edit: suddenly occurred to me that I could click the link and find out. Well, none of his bright ideas were reported in the story. Looks like Perry was there too. There is at least one person more likely to make bigger mess than Paul but less likely to get near the levers of power, Which is small comfort.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I’m pretty sure that “Putin” is being used here not as “Hitler Mark 14” but as “overbearing jackass who thinks he’s right about everything.”
If we were calling Putin “George W. Bush Rebooted,” would that get the point across better?