Trust

Surely we can trust them.

Some aging "terrorists" recently came forward to remind us of some earlier abuses of authority.

The speech today.

Weirdly enough, the speech happened to be delivered on the anniversary of "Beware the Military Industrial Complex." So Digby observed; part of her take on today's speech

... the president and others' insistence that Snowden is a traitor while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for reforming, changing, investigating, extolling and criticizing the secret surveillance state based entirely on his revelations is now beyond fatuous. There was no mechanism in place aside from the one he chose, obviously, and it's exactly the reason we have freedom of the press in this country in the first place. It is time for these powerful government officials to grow up and recognize that the mere fact that they are making changes proves that he is a whistleblower and at least allow him to obtain long term legal asylum in a foreign country. We are strong enough to allow our faults to be exposed without persecuting those who expose them. In fact, doing that is downright unAmerican.

More Freedom

West Virginia news, via Tengrain—

Water-relief tankers filled from Charleston water system — you read that right. The tanker trucks allegedly delivering fresh, safe water to the 300,000 parched residents of the chemical spell Libertarian Paradise of West Virginia, was filling the tanker trucks with the contaminated water.

...

Freedom Industries files for bankruptcy, owes $2.4 million to IRS — Surely it is a coincidence that Freedom Industries would enter bankruptcy protection just now, before all the class action and other law suits could be filed for poisoning the water of 300,000 people through negligence?

"The filing also puts a hold on all of the lawsuits filed against Freedom Industries. Since the leak last week, about a mile and a half upriver from West Virginia Water American’s plant in Charleston, about 25 lawsuits have been filed against Freedom Industries in Kanawha Circuit Court. The company also faces a federal lawsuit."

Couldn't Happen To A More Deserving Guy

This.

Best taken with digby's reminder of how nominal Democrats joined in to swoon along with the Establishment crush on the guy. Digby quotes this, from just a few months ago—

The checks are flying into the Republican governor's war chest from all sorts of unlikely places — the hedge fund run by liberal billionaire George Soros, for example, and the politically progressive halls of the University of California, Berkeley.

The nascent support from Democratic donors is an early sign of Christie’s fundraising prowess in a potential run for the White House in 2016, experts and Democratic donors said, and dovetails with recent polls showing him gaining popularity nationally among Democrats and independents.

...

"While I do not agree with his stance on every issue, he is one of the best political leaders I have talked to in a long time," said Ken Rosen, a UC-Berkeley professor who cut a $3,800 check to Christie after chatting with him at two events. "He is willing to take on tough issues such as pension reform, education reform, mental-health issues, even if his views are not politically correct."

Tough enough to bully and physically intimidate school teachers.

It Never Ends

"Terri Schaivo Redux," says Charles Pierce. A story he knows too well, having observed the earlier one first-hand.

Comparing the right's exploitation of Schaivo with this new, horrifying family tragedy, Pierce says that—

In the end, the dangerous combination of fundamentalist rage and raw political opportunism got so bad that it blew up on the Republicans, and it had a lot to do with their losing the congress in 2006.

And yet, remember, nothing is ever finished with these people. Now comes the tragic case of Marlise Munoz, a young Texas woman who collapsed while pregnant, and whose family has pleaded that she be allowed to pass. However, even though Munoz is dead, according to Texas law, she must be maintained as an incubator for the fetus inside her for as long as that may be necessary. They aren't even sure whether the drugs that were given to Munoz in an attempt to revive her may have damaged the fetus itself. She is being kept alive as a receptacle, nothing more. It is grotesque, and it is the law.

The surface difference between then and now is that the far right has largely resisted the urge to fly into total barking hysteria. That could be because the beating they took over the shutdown has given them a temporary modicum of impulse control, but the more likely explanation is that there's just no need for the circus to come to town. Republicans across the country have succeeded in systematically gutting abortion rights. The circus is already here. The circus is the law.

Let Freedom Spill Forth

Sleazy operators calling themselves "Freedom Industries"? What could go wrong?

Freedom, indeed: from regulation, or responsibility.

Grist For The Narrative Mill

It follows that November's fifty-year assassination anniversary would lead to another fifty-year mark: the anniversary today of LBJ's "War on Poverty" speech.

Despite all right-wing success in undermining it, cue media conclusions that the "war" was a failure and government can't address poverty.

On another media front: Robert Gates.

It was trustingly bipartisan of Obama to retain a long-time Bush family operative. On the other hand, I don't look forward to how this will feed the "failed presidency" narrative.

Newly Arrived (Evolved, Or Not)

Charles Pierce—

The world, at the age of 4.5 billion years, more or less, and increasingly depending on whether you're a Republican or not, has spun merrily around the sun one more time, and all of us are still here. We survive, but it's an open question whether or not we evolve.

It's not just the newly quantified stupid inherent in one half of our political system that bothers me, although knowing that an ever-increasing slice of one of our two political parties adheres to the biological principles of 1838 is worrisome. (What, for example, are they teaching their children? What will their children teach their own children? And on and on until half the country is painting in caves again.) It's that it's always been my conclusion that human evolution -- political, cultural, and social -- is tied to the impulse toward cooperation, or, in the case of our politics, the inclination toward commonwealth.

As David Ehrenstein says, "the facts are still being disputed by morons." Ergo, they are fans of.

Of course people fall for the hokiness; of course the wingnut family has political ambitions.

But are these scripted hillbillies themselves real or fake? The overly good teeth are the tip-off.