Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3385

Ahead on the 6/21 Maddow show

Tonight's guests:

Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar, (D), the only member of the Texas House committee who voted against the anti-abortion measures today in Texas. She is the chair of the Women's Health Caucus.
Colum Lynch, United Nations reporter, Washington Post

Today In Hyperbole: Zombie Edition

An article about a rift in the Georgia Republican Party that appeared in the Athens alt-weekly Flagpole, prompted this thoughtful, temperate letter to the editor. To wit:

Enjoyed the Republican Party article by Matthew Pulver (May 29). Inspired me to think. (Editor's note: But not too hard, apparently.)

The Republican Party of Georgia is unique in that it represents many different factions of Georgia politics. There are the lifelong Republicans whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were Republicans, and then there are those deserters from the Democratic Party who saw the future when Lyndon Johnson became president.  

Progressive Democrats have evolved who believe the sooner we become all of one color, throw out the morals and the Constitution and ask the government to provide us with everything, the better off our country will be. How has it worked for Egypt? 

But first they have a real big challenge: how to destroy peoples' common sense. Thus, the Georgia Republican Party,  people with common sense, know that when more horses are riding in the wagon than pulling the wagon, the wagon stops moving. It is not that the horses do not want to pull the loaded wagon, but they can't any more. 

The last thing that we as Americans want to see happen is the ethnic cleansing and religious civil war that is going on around the world.   Don't laugh, I say, just look at what people are doing with arming themselves today. Our government continues to hand out money. What will those recipients do when it stops?  Only the meat eaters will survive.  

The Civil War that Matthew mentioned was not fought over slavery, but self-determination. It is too bad that the South lost, because we will fight that war again. When the zombies get hungry, they will leave the projects and look for whatever they can find to eat. They will not know how to provide for themselves and will destroy what they cannot consume.

I hold out hope that this was meant to be a wide-ranging satire of several strains of conservative ideology--if so, my hat is off. If not, then this letter should be studied, word for stupefying word, by future historians attempting to explain what went so terribly wrong in the early 2010s. Assuming, of course, those historians aren't first devoured tartare by ravenous Zombie-crats.

P.S., that whole Democrats are zombies meme? Bob Hope got there first.

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Friday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits:

* This afternoon, President Obama made it official, nominating James Comey to lead the FBI. (In the process, we were reminded that Comey is, in fact, quite tall.)

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* Starting the clock: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., moved to bring the Senate's immigration debate to close Friday.... Reid now appears to have plenty of votes from Republicans to overcome a filibuster led by GOP conservatives such as Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas. The test of that assumption will come June 24 at 5:30 p.m."

* Brazil: "More than a million protesters marched in the streets late Thursday, according to Brazilian news reports, in the biggest demonstrations yet.... The mass protests thundering across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances -- costly stadiums, corrupt politicians, high taxes and shoddy schools -- and spread to more than 100 cities on Thursday night, the most to date, with increasing ferocity."

* Gun violence: "A man armed with a shotgun shot one person outside a North Carolina law firm Friday before darting across a busy street and wounding three others outside a Wal-Mart before officers subdued him, police said."

* Colorado: "A massive wildfire threatened a tourist town in Colorado's southwestern mountains on Friday, as its roughly 400 residents emptied out ahead of the fast-burning blaze fueled by hot, windy weather."

* A lively gathering, I'm sure: "President Obama will hold his first-ever meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) -- the group charged with ensuring the executive branch balances privacy and civil liberties needs with its national security efforts -- on Friday, according to a senior administration official."

* "Like a Christmas wish list for Halliburton": "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Friday that the new border security amendment added to the immigration reform bill in the Senate is nothing more than a gift to defense contractors, but the Senate Judiciary Committee will still hold his nose and support the legislation."

* Learning what minimization procedures are: "The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection."

* I'm glad to see St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard explain what Ben Bernanke got wrong.

* Today I learned who Paula Deen is. Oh my.

* And finally, watching Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) think he can match wits with political scientist Norm Ornstein was certainly an odd sight.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Emergency contraception finally clears final hurdle

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To add a coda to a story we've been following for quite a while, the Obama administration restrictions on the availability for the best-known emergency contraceptive pill are no more.

After years of political delays, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved over-the-counter sale of Plan B One-Step emergency contraception to women and girls without age or point-of-sale restrictions.

In a statement announcing the change, the FDA said it was complying with an order from U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman, who had previously slammed the Obama administration's obstructionism over access to emergency contraception as "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent."

"It's about time," said Chris Iseli. "It's taken too long to bring emergency contraception out from behind the pharmacy counter."

Going forward, the restrictions have been eliminated -- those seeking to purchase the emergency contraception can do so regardless of age, with no ID or prescription, right off the drugstore shelf.

So, the story's over? Well, it's almost over. NPR, which ran a terrific timeline detailing how this process has unfolded over the years, noted that yesterday's FDA announcement applies to Plan B One-Step emergency contraception, but not a generic version, which for now will require prescriptions for young women 16 and younger.

Still, the broader availability of the emergency contraception is a very positive development and an important boost for public health and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies.

O'Reilly throws his support behind immigration bill

It looks like the lobbying paid off.

Senators gained on Thursday what they clearly see as a crucial new ally in their quest to pass an immigration measure: Bill O'Reilly.

The Fox News host announced that, after the completion of a new Senate deal on border security, he was in favor of the bill's passage.

"It is time for the USA to pass immigration reform," he said. "For years I've called for a more secure southern border, you know that. And now it looks like the secure border is in reach. At least somewhat. So I hope this bill does become law."

The announcement comes on the heels of a New Yorker piece noting that Republican members of the Senate's Gang of Eight privately lobbied O'Reilly and other Fox News hosts, hoping their endorsement of the reform bill would improve its prospects.

Indeed, note that after O'Reilly threw his support to the Senate bill last night, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) issued a press release to trumpet the endorsement.

On a certain level, I'm hard pressed to imagine why it matters whether a conservative media personality endorses pending legislation or not, but if Fox's hosts are seen by the public as leading members of the Republican Party, it stands to reason that they'll not only be lobbied by senators, but that their pronouncements will carry some weight within the GOP.

McConnell takes more air from IRS scandal balloon

Associated Press

As the "controversy" surrounding IRS scrutiny of tax-exempt applications has unraveled, so too has the nature of the Republican allegations. Let's not lose sight of the initial gambit: the right wanted Americans to believe the White House used the tax agency to punish political rivals.

It's obviously difficult to take this argument seriously anymore, and each new allegation seems to be sillier than the last. It's left Republicans, eager to keep some semblance of "scandal" alive, repeating contradictory and incoherent talking points.

Today, though he probably intended to do the opposite, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) let a little more air out of the IRS balloon.

IRS agents were taking cues from union leaders when they decided to target the Tea Party, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell charged on Friday.

"When the head of the union that represents unionized IRS workers publicly vilifies the Tea Party, is it any wonder that members of her union would get caught targeting them?" the Kentucky Republican said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

First, McConnell really should do a better job at keeping up with new details. Earlier this week, transcripts were released of the interviews between IRS officials in Cincinnati and House Oversight Committee investigators, and they help detail how and why Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status saw their applications receive extra scrutiny. Shouldn't the Minority Leader -- or at a minimum, his staff -- have read this before giving a speech on the topic?

Second, and more important, is the fact that McConnell is moving the goalposts again, this time in a direction the right won't like -- if the Minority Leader is blaming unions, he's not blaming the Obama White House.

In fact, McConnell effectively ruled out White House involvement, which is yet another nail in the coffin of this entire story.

"There might be some folks out there waiting for a hand signed memo from President Obama to Lois Learner to turn up," the Republican leader said. "Do not hold your breath.... I am prepared to say, and did say today, that the president and his political allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments, but that's quite different from saying they ordered it."

But for the last six weeks, Republicans have been heavily invested in saying they ordered it. Oh well.

McConnell did try one sly rhetorical move:

"Now we have an administration that's desperately trying to prove that nobody at the top was involved in any of this stuff, even as they hope that the media loses interest in this scandal and moves on."

And why is that sly? Jon Chait noted the effort to flip around the burden of proof:

Got that? Before Republicans were going to prove that Obama's administration was involved. All of the evidence suggests it wasn't. So now McConnell is framing the question as Obama trying to prove he wasn't involved. Which, of course, he can't. For that matter, McConnell can't prove that he didn't mastermind the IRS. You can't prove a negative.

Get past the goalpost moving, however, and McConnell was attacking the IRS story while subtly helping kill it. Chait added this is a "kind of covered retreat, signaling the IRS scandal's turn into a vague trope that conservatives use with other members of the tribe ... to signal some dark beliefs they don't need to back up."

And as Greg Sargent concluded, as the story is reduced to fact-free allegations that no longer have anything to do with the right's original targets, Republicans have reached a familiar comfort level: "McConnell can now drop all pretenses and speak directly to the base in language only they can understand."

Boehner reflects on the Hoover Dam

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House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) spoke to the National Association of Manufacturers yesterday, and said he'd like to see the United States become "a nation of builders" again -- but that rascally President Obama stands in the way.

"America's greatness has always rested on our ability to build and produce things," Boehner said. "Under the Obama administration, however, it's become harder than ever to build in this country." [...]

"[T]he Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, or even our highway system would be almost impossible to build in today's regulatory environment," Boehner said. "This administration would have us believe we can build a great nation on reams of red tape while operating a service economy with things built by earlier generations."

It was kind of amusing to me to see Boehner phrase his argument this way, because parts of this are similar to President Obama's own rhetoric. Remember the "you didn't build that" remarks he delivered during the campaign? Obama said at the time, "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.... We say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That's how we funded the GI Bill. That's how we created the middle class. That's how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam."

Obama's point was that the nation can still achieve great things if we work together, share common goals, and maintain our sense of national ambition. Boehner's point was that the nation probably can't achieve great things because red tape is bad.

One of these arguments makes sense, and I'll give you a hint: it's not the one coming from the House Speaker.

I should note that I have a special fondness for the Hoover Dam, not just as engineering marvel, but also as a political metaphor. Remember Rachel's "Lean Forward" promo from two years ago?

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For those who can't watch clips online, here's what Rachel said in the spot:

"When you are this close to Hoover Dam, it makes you realize how small a human is in relation to this as a human project. You can't be the guy who builds this. You can't be the town who builds this. You can't even be the state who builds this. You have to be the country that builds something like this. This is a national project. This is a project of national significance. We've got those projects on the menu right now. And we've got to figure out whether or not we are still a country that can think this big."

Now, according to the House Speaker, the answer is, "Probably not." Those pesky regulations, he says, stand in the way of projects of national significance.

Let's put aside, at least for now, the fact that Boehner has no idea how many regulations were used to construct the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Interstate Highway System. Let's instead focus on more practical considerations.

Indeed, what I'd like to see Democrats do is call Boehner's bluff -- he wants the United States to get behind projects like the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Interstate Highway System? That's great news, because for the past several years, Boehner and just about every member of his political party in Congress has rejected the idea of public investment in infrastructure and public works.

Was yesterday a reflection of a shift in Republican priorities?

Note that Boehner didn't reference private-sector triumphs in his speech; he touted government triumphs, created after public officials agreed to invest public funds for the public good. The Speaker now looks at these projects as worthwhile endeavors worthy of boasts? Terrific -- then let's do more of this. If the "regulatory environment" won't allow projects of national significance -- it will; he's wrong -- then I imagine Democrats would gladly change the regulations to make the projects possible.

It would certainly be a pleasant change of pace for GOP policymakers, most of whom have opposed infrastructure spending, and many of whom believe federal efforts in this area are necessarily unconstitutional and inconsistent with the 10th Amendment (the Constitution doesn't mention highways, bridges, or dams).

So what's it going to be, Mr. Speaker? How committed are you to seeing the nation build things again?

Friday's campaign round-up

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) released his response to the NRA yesterday, with this new video that will be hitting West Virginia airwaves. The spot debuted yesterday morning on MSNBC.

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* In Massachusetts' U.S. Senate special election, a new UMass-Lowell/Boston Herald poll shows Rep. Ed Markey (D) pulling away, leading Republican Gabriel Gomez by 20 points, 56% to 36%. The election is this upcoming Tuesday, June 25.

* It's a little late in the game, but former Sen. Scott Brown (R) will pull himself away from New Hampshire for a while, making an appearance with Gomez on Monday night.

* Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's (D) 2008 2004 presidential campaign didn't turn out especially well, but at the Netroots Nation conference, the former DNC chair expressed an interest in seeking national office again in 2016.

* Speaking of 2016, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) referred to his ambitions this week as if he'd already made up his mind. Asked about a possible candidacy, the former governor told TV preacher Pat Robertson's news outlet, "It will be based on my record.... I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the chirpers out there."

* And while Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) is retiring at the end of this term, Molly Redden reports that the Republican candidates in her Minnesota district hoping to succeed her are "almost as loopy as she is."

Boehner struggles with the economic basics

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To serve effectively in Congress, one does not need a post-graduate degree. When it comes to economics, there's no reason to expect leading lawmakers to be Nobel laureates or be experts in every nuance of complex policies.

But to be taken seriously, policymakers should have some basic understanding of current events, especially if officials hold leadership posts. It's why I've always found it unsettling to see House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) economic illiteracy on display.

House Speaker John Boehner blamed the markets sell-off Thursday on the Federal Reserve's bond-buying policies. [...]

"The sell-off is in large part due to the policies that we've had coming out of the Federal Reserve," Boehner said. "You can't continue to deflate our money and deflate it and deflate it have the equity markets go up without some change."

So, in the Speaker's mind, the major Wall Street indexes took a tumble on Wednesday and Thursday because of the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing.

For everyone in Grown-Up Land, the major Wall Street indexes took a tumble on Wednesday and Thursday because the Federal Reserve signaled an end to quantitative easing. Boehner sees the markets falling and thinks he understands why, but in fact has the entire story backwards.

And if this were just some rare slip-up, it'd be easier to overlook, but the House Speaker has repeatedly demonstrated a profound ignorance on the basics of economic policy. At the height of the global economic crisis in early 2009, for example, Boehner called for a five-year spending freeze and a constitutional amendment to mandate balanced budgets. (At the time, even David Brooks called the idea "insane.")

As unemployment remained high, Boehner's understanding of economic developments seemed to get worse.

In early 2011, shortly after becoming Speaker, Boehner delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York. Bloomberg News examined Boehner's assessment at the time and found that the House Speaker "built his case on several assertions that are contradicted by market indicators and government reports," which was a polite way of saying, "Boehner's claims contradict every known aspect of reality."

Jonathan Chait took a closer look at Boehner's remarks on tax policy and discovered they were "gibberish." Ruth Marcus scrutinized the speech and discovered that Boehner was relying on an "incoherent, impervious-to-facts economic philosophy."

A few months later, Boehner delivered another speech in which he argued that "job creators in America are essentially on strike" -- even as unemployment was steadily improving -- because employers were disgusted with "out-of-control spending in Washington," even as federal spending was declining.

It was, in other words, demonstrable nonsense.

Again, it's foolish to think the Speaker of the House -- any Speaker of the House -- must have a PhD in economics before holding the gavel, but Boehner seems to lack even a rudimentary understanding of economics, budgets, and monetary policy -- at a time when all of these issues matter quite a bit.

I'm not saying Boehner is subjectively wrong because I disagree with his ideology; I'm saying he's objectively wrong because he has no idea what he's talking about.

For the Speaker to see a steep two-day drop on Wall Street and think to himself, "If it weren't for quantitative easing, this wouldn't have happened," is alarming.

Unhinged N.H. lawmaker exits stage right

Former New Hampshire state Rep. Stella Tremblay (R)

Remember New Hampshire state Rep. Stella Tremblay (R)? She raised eyebrows in April when, just a week after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, she argued on Glenn Beck's Facebook page that the United States government was responsible for the attack. Pressed for an explanation, Tremblay, who's also a birther, said she had suspicions of some kind of plot involving Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi nationals, and "black ops" soldiers.

This week, the Republican lawmaker was at it again, emailing her legislative colleagues to say she had proof that the federal government was behind the bombing, which amounted to a variety of conspiracy theories she found online. "Have you seen ANY main stream media doing a follow up on these stories? I have not," Tremblay wrote. "I just connect the dots. Apparently, it is very dangerous to seek truth, or ask questions."

Last night, Tremblay decided it was time to exit stage right.

Controversial state Rep. Stella Tremblay, R-Auburn, resigned from the New Hampshire House of Representatives Thursday, moments before lawmakers were poised to pass a two-year, nearly $11 billion budget and a day after she made another allegation the Boston Marathon bombing might have been a government conspiracy.

Tremblay sent a letter of resignation to the House Speaker's office via certified mail on Thursday. She also sold her house for $410,000 on Monday, according to property records.

The Glenn Beck wing of the Republican Party still exists, but as of last night, at least when it comes to elected officials, its membership is one person smaller.