Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Toemeesleather]

From the NYT:


WASHINGTON — I’LL pay for this column.

The Rottweilers will be unleashed.

Once the Clintons had a War Room. Now they have a Slime Room.

Once they had the sly James Carville, fondly known as “serpenthead.” Now they have the slippery David Brock, accurately known as a snake.

Brock fits into the Clinton tradition of opportunistic knife-fighters like Dick Morris and Mark Penn.

The silver-haired 52-year-old, who sports colorful designer suits and once wore a monocle, brawled his way into a Times article about the uneasy marriage between Hillary Clinton’s veteran attack dogs and the group of advisers who are moving over from Obamaland.

Hillary hasn’t announced a 2016 campaign yet. She’s busy polling more than 200 policy experts on how to show that she really cares about the poor while courting the banks. Yet her shadow campaign is already in a déjà-vu-all-over-again shark fight over control of the candidate and her money. It’s the same old story: The killer organization that, even with all its ruthless hired guns, can’t quite shoot straight.

Squabbling competing factions helped Hillary squander a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in 2008.

As Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick chronicled, the nasty dispute spilled into public and Brock resigned last week from the board of a pro-Clinton “super-PAC” called Priorities USA Action — whose co-chairman is Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager — accusing the political action committee of “an orchestrated political hit job” and “the kind of dirty trick I’ve witnessed in the right-wing and would not tolerate then.”

He should know.

The former “right-wing hit man,” and impresario of “dirty tricks,” as Brock has said of himself, made his living in the ’90s sliming Anita Hill as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” and breaking the Troopergate story, which accused Arkansas state troopers of setting up liaisons for Bill Clinton and spurred Paula Jones’s 1994 sexual harassment lawsuit.

He has tried to discredit anyone who disagreed with his ideological hits (myself and reporters I know included). And that’s still the business he’s in, simply on the other side as a Hillary zealot. (His conversion began in 1996 when he published a biography of Hillary that was not a total hit job and that began the thaw.)

Just as Bill Clinton was able to forgive another architect of the vast right-wing conspiracy, Richard Mellon Scaife, once Scaife was charmed by Hillary in person and began giving money to the Clinton foundation, so, too, was Bill won over by Brock’s book, “Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative,” and Brock’s Media Matters and Correct the Record websites, which ferociously push back against any Hillary coverage that isn’t fawning.

With the understood blessing of the Clintons, Brock runs a $28 million cluster of media monitoring groups and oppo research organizations that are vehicles to rebut and at times discredit and threaten anyone who casts a gimlet eye at Clinton Inc.
Continue reading the main story

As Confessore and Chozick wrote, he uses a fund-raiser named Mary Pat Bonner, whose firm has collected millions of dollars in commissions — a practice many fund-raising experts consider unethical.

Everyone wants to be at the trough for this one because Hillary is likely to raise, and more important, spend more than $1 billion on her campaign.

It's a democracy for dollar bills, and every dollar bill gets one vote. Hillary is but a symptom of that.

Better someone like Brock than a Boy Scout running the campaign. We've had enough of nice guys trying to counteract the likes of Lee Atwater...Patrick Sorensen

This is a glaring example of why we need public financing of elections. There is no free lunch.

The Clinton crowd is trying to woo Brock back into the fold because he’s good at getting money and knows how their enemies think. The Clintons appreciate the fact that Brock, like Morris, is a take-no-prisoners type with the ethical compass of a jackal. Baked in the tactics of the right, Brock will never believe that negative coverage results from legitimate shortcomings. Instead, it’s all personal, all false, and all a war.

This is a bad harbinger for those who had hoped that Hillary would “kill off the wild dogs,” as one Obama loyalist put it, and Bill would leave behind the sketchy hangers-on in the mold of Ron Burkle and Jeffrey Epstein.

Hillary’s inability to dispense with brass-knuckle, fanatical acolytes like Brock shows that she still has an insecure streak that requires Borgia-like blind loyalty, and can’t distinguish between the real vast right-wing conspiracy and the voices of legitimate concern.

Money-grubbing is always the ugly place with the Clintons, who have devoured $2.1 billion in contributions since 1992 to their political campaigns, family foundation and philanthropies, according to The Old (Good) New Republic.

David Axelrod, the author of a new memoir, “Believer,” wrote that Hillary’s past gurus, Morris and Penn, were nonbelievers — mercenary, manipulative and avaricious. He told Politico’s Glenn Thrush that he would have advised Hillary not to cash in with her book and six-figure speeches.

Axelrod reiterated to me that Hillary’s designated campaign chairman, John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff who left his post as an Obama counselor on Friday, “has the strength and standing to enforce a kind of campaign discipline that hasn’t existed before.”

But, for now, what Republicans say about government is true of the Clintons: They really do believe that your money belongs to them.

Someday, they should give their tin cup to the Smithsonian. It’s one of the wonders of the world.

[hedge]

"Both parties have politicians in the latter group. It is not clear that the Democrats have any in the first group."

What is clear is that you're an idiot...

[Professor Tiger]

ISIS releases a horrific video of 20+ Egyptian Christians being beheaded. I assume the Administration will describe it as random dissidence committed by people of no particular religion against other people of no particular religion.

[Jungle Rat]

Is this the same ISIS we bomb 30 times a day?

[SnoodGator]

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ts/384980/

[Professor Tiger]

Long but intriguing article.

If it's possible to explain this recent brand of medieval barbaric theocratic insanity to those not so afflicted, he has done so.

[sardis]

Basically, the article is saying that Obama is full of shit when he says that ISIS is not Islamic.

[Toemeesleather]

Verbose.



Obama is full of shit.

Concise.

[bluetick]

I guess our 'crooked governor watchdog' missed the news about the Oregon governor.

The situation in Oregon reflects precisely what happens when the electorate foolishly promotes, through blind acceptance of party affiliation and/or longevity in office as the only metrics for deciding how to vote, a group of politicians who couldn't get elected in any other state except perhaps Massachusetts or Vermont.


It is time that voters began to understand that there are two kinds of politicians in the 21st century. The first are those who stand for election based on their concern for the country, for the people they represent, and for government which serves the people in the traditional way of providing needed services efficiently.


The second is those who wish to be elected to impose their ideology, achieve personal financial success, and transform the government at all levels to one which is served by the electorate, rather than the other way around.


Both parties have politicians in the latter group. It is not clear that the Democrats have any in the first group.

No link, no cite. No guts..

[Toemeesleather]

Marie Harf, the State Department’s deputy spokesman is being mercilessly mocked for an interview she gave to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in which she said, of the conflict with the Islamic State: “We cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether—”


At which point, as the Washington Times notes, Matthews cut her off and challenged her—unsuccessfully. “Ms. Harf dug in and insisted improving the economic opportunities for the terrorist group is the key to turning back their terror.”

As funny as it is, it also feels a bit unsporting to pick on Harf like this. After all, she’s just doing her job, which is to act as a mouthpiece for an administration whose guiding principle seems to be that political correctness—which is to say, a thoroughgoing dishonesty—is the best weapon for dealing with Islamic terrorism.




FORWARD!!llll

[Professor Tiger]

You know it's bad when Chris Matthews is trying to pull you back from your flashback from Woodstock.

It's worth pointing out that Bin Ladin's father was a billionaire, all the 9/11 highjackers came from prosperous families, and the Americans that went to fight for AQ came from places like Marin County CA.

[Toemeesleather]

F--K logic.




FORWARD!!llll

[Toemeesleather]

More.....you can't make this sh!te up......

Turns out Harf is just a typical lib, like the ones in here:


Look, it might be too nuanced an argument for some, like I've seen over the past 24 hours some of the commentary out there, but it's really the smart way that Democrats, Republicans, military commanders, our partners in the Arab world think we need to combat this



We're not smart enough to understand her dumbassery, sound familiar??!!!!lllll

[bluetick]

I don't know Asst. Deputy Harf from Adam, and her 'root cause' babble is better suited for our enemies NOT named ISIS or ISIL, but it's pretty obvious why you omitted her more salient points that preceeded said 'root cause' babble:

Matthews: Are we killing enough of them?

Harf: We're killing a lot of them and we're going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians, They're in this fight with us.

But hey - stick with Rush and Breitbart, cherrypick for full effect, watch a few more beheadings, elevate that bp...whatever it takes to get you through this Siberian cold snap. heh

[bluetick]

GOP Rep. Sparks Backlash With Comments About Nuking ISIS

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/j ... eapon-isis

Dumbassery is all around, for sure.

[10ac]

State rep, heh. Although not a bad idea.

[bluetick]

Although not a bad idea.

Our ICBM flying towards a target in Syria or Iraq is a bad idea.

[Dr. Strangelove]

OKLAHOMA CITY -

Oklahoma lawmakers are considering a bill that would fire court clerks and judges if they issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

House Bill 1599 is one of several bills that would impose restrictions on gay marriages, which are now legal in Oklahoma. The bill passed out of committee on Tuesday and now heads to the full house.

There are constitutional concerns with this bill, however the five votes the bill got in committee all came from state representatives who have law degrees.

“It's quite possibly the most unconstitutional thing I've ever seen go a through committee,” said Troy Stevenson with Freedom Oklahoma.

Freedom Oklahoma leaders knew they would have some legal battles this legislative session after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling paved the way for same sex marriage in Oklahoma. However, the advocacy group thought House Bill 1599 would be dead on arrival.

“This has massive constitutional issues,” Stevenson said. “I would take it a step farther, I think it would cause a constitutional crisis if this was passed.

Rep. Sally Kern's bill would strip pay and benefits from public employees who recognize or issue same sex marriage licenses. It would also remove any judges who violate the measure.

Essentially, if they do their jobs, they lose their jobs and if they refuse to do their jobs, they are violating a federal court order. The bill also states the measure cannot be challenged in court.

http://www.news9.com/story/28143130/pro ... e-licenses

LMAO at that last part..."this law cannot be challenged in any court"...great catch-all! How has nobody thought that up before???

[Professor Tiger]

Joe Biden does it again. Can you imagine what would happen if a Republican VP put his hands on the new SECDEF's wife and whispered sweet nothings into her ear?

[youtube]LZDOWIxpBgg[/youtube]

Bill Clinton would have unclasped her bra in that amount of time, and nobody would have cared about that either.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oklahoma seek to ban AP History from the state...say the course is not 'patriotic' enough

http://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-lawmaker ... 51182.html