This Week in Gun Safety
On Thursday, the Aurora, CO movie theater shooter who killed 12 people and wounded 70 heard his verdict--not insane, and guilty on 165 counts of murder, attempted murder, and other crimes..
On Thursday, the Mother Emanuel shooter who killed nine people in Charleston, SC appeared in court to hear the indictment against him.
On Thursday, a suspected terrorist killed four US Marines in Chattanooga, TN.
What do these heinous acts have in common? Not motive. Not place. Not technique. Not targets.
Guns.
Just guns.
More guns don't make Americans safe. More guns makes more dead Americans.
How many lives are too many?
This Week in Leaders and Legacies
Candidate Barack Obama told us in 2007 that he would hold discussions with nations not currently considered allies--Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran foremost among them. Engaging with them, he believed, was a necessary step toward coexistence. We couldn't wipe them off the planet--well, we could, but not without consequences worse than we wanted to deal with--so we had to find ways to live with them. And the old ways weren't working. We needed a new approach.
And he followed up. He opened relations with Cuba, ending a 50+-year embargo that had accomplished very little except impoverishing the citizens of one of our nearest neighbors. He's talking to Venezuela. He negotiated a climate deal with China. And now he has completed an agreement with Iran that puts the brakes on their nuclear weapons program.
It's not a perfect deal. No deal is. If one country holds all the cards and the other has none, then the former can impose its wishes on the latter, but that's not deal-making, it's colonialism. Peter Beinart writes:
"When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
"If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
"And it’s what George W. Bush refused to do after 9/11, when he defined the 'war on terror' not merely as a conflict against al-Qaeda but as a license to wage war, or cold war, against every anti-American regime supposedly pursuing weapons of mass destruction. This massive overestimation of American power underlay the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of a half-million Iraqis and almost 4,500 Americans, and cost the United States over $2 trillion. And it underlay Bush’s refusal to negotiate with Iran, even when Iran made dramatic overtures to the United States. Negotiations, after all, require mutual concessions, which Bush believed were unnecessary; if America just kept flexing its muscles, the logic went, Iran’s regime would collapse."
American power is not limitless, though, and Bush weakened us with his twin decade-long wars. Now we're left with a war-weary public and exhausted soldiers. Even if it were a good idea to invade Iran--which it's not--we'd have a hard time doing it. And if we're worried about Islamic terrorists, we need to remember that occupying yet another Muslim country would only spawn more.
The Iran deal can't be compared to perfect. It has to be looked at in light of what we can get, and what options we have. Given those options, a deal that forestalls their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons is a better bet than flexing our muscles and giving them more incentive to hurry that process. The president and Secretary of State should be commended for hanging in there, for crafting a deal that could open doors between old enemies that never talked, and that satisfied the goals of seven world powers. It's a victory for diplomacy, It required no bloodshed or loss of life. The world is a safer place, and will remain so, because of this effort. And in five years, or ten, when the doubts of the naysayers are proved wrong (as they have so often been, with this president), the world will still be a safer place. (And we'll be paying less for gas.) The bigger danger now lies in the reaction of Israel's right-wing leadership.
Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says, "The deal just struck by Iran, the United States, and five other world powers in Vienna is a major victory for U.S. national security. It shrinks Iran’s nuclear complex down to a token capability and wraps it in a permanent inspection and monitoring regime. The new agreement doesn’t overthrow the clerical regime ruling Iran. It doesn’t change Iran’s policies toward Israel or its Arab neighbors. And it doesn’t force Iran to end the repression of its own people. The agreement forged between Iran and the world’s powers does only one thing, but it is a big one: It reverses and contains what most experts consider the greatest nuclear proliferation challenge in the world. Whatever else Iran may do in the world, it will not do it backed with the threat of a nuclear weapon."
Josh Marshall at Taking Points Memo adds this:
"The Bush administration decided it wasn't going to go along with the Clinton administration's naive, give-away-everything negotiations with North Korea. The Bush team, particularly the first term team, decided they were going to hang tough and not be patsies for the North Koreans. And now North Korea is a nuclear state with a number of nuclear weapons. Maybe that would have happened had the Democrats won in 2000 too. But it did happen under the hang tough crowd.
"There's a lot of Iran pony thinking going on about what would be cool if we could have everything we want. But as much as I fear what a Republican president might do on the Iran front, I think going to war with Iran is highly unlikely. Stiffening sanctions won't happen because even if we stiffened sanctions, Europe and Russia and China won't. So all the folks saying it's not good enough or it's a disaster or whatever else are basically saying we should hang tough and let the Iranians do whatever they want. Indeed, adopt a maximal line of confrontation short of war, which will empower hardliners and make it more likely the Iranians will take the step from being a nuclear threshold state to an actual nuclear weapons state. It is the elevation of self-satisfaction over tangible results and reality."
And at the American Conservative, Daniel Larison writes, "This will limit Iran’s nuclear program more effectively than a decade of sanctions and coercive methods ever did, and it makes Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon much less likely than any other available course of action. The alternatives that Iran hawks have been proposing for the last two years–ending negotiations, more sanctions, threatening or taking military action–would have left Iran’s program under fewer constraints and would have pushed Iran towards building nuclear weapons. It is important to remember that the loudest, shrillest opponents of this deal would have made a nuclear-armed Iran more likely if they had their way."
Nuclear proliferation experts and former diplomats from both parties are overwhelmingly in favor of the deal as structured.
When President George W. Bush took office, Iran was not a nuclear power. They had a handful of centrifuges. He said they were part of the "Axis of Evil," and refused to talk to them. He invaded Iraq, removing Iran's biggest rival and allowing Iran incredible influence on Iraq, which it hadn't had with Saddam Hussein there. Bush refused to enforce sanctions against Iran (levied in the 1990s) because they might inhibit the global oil business. In 2006, Bush reversed course and his administration offered to negotiate with Iran (they contemplated a deal much like the one we got this week) but they didn't pursue the idea with much enthusiasm, and it went nowhere. By the time Bush left office, Iran had 8000 centrifuges, and the fracturing of Iraq had made Iran a stronger player in the region.
But President Obama came into office promising to talk to our foes as well as our friends. He wanted to be a peacetime president, though he inherited wars. He wanted to reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of nuclear war across the globe. What he didn't want was to start new wars. For generations, we've been on the brink of war with Iran, and now, suddenly, we're not. On the streets of Tehran the night the deal was made, throngs were in the streets chanting "Death to No One! Long Live Life!"
The deal arrived at this week stops Iran from getting a bomb, and it defuses the risk of war between Iran and the US. It was possible because President Obama brought together the world's major powers, each of which has its own agenda. He persuaded Russia and China--through intense negotiation over the first two years of his presidency--to agree to sanctions on Iran. Then, through Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, he held Iran to a good deal that shuts off all of the avenues they might use to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Wednesday, we woke to a world safer than it was on Monday. Obama might have received the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely. This week, he earned it.
Side Note: We don't know how many other presidents, if any, have referenced I Love Lucy, but this president did in a press conference about the deal. "You know, there are only so many uranium mines in Iran. And if in fact we're counting the amount of uranium that's being mined, and suddenly some is missing on the back end, they got some 'splainin' to do."
The press conference was also unusual for the gusto with which Obama addressed every question about the deal, asked for objections and criticism that he could answer. Law schools could show the video for a class in legal arguments.
Below the fold: Prison, 2016, Damages, Disgrace, Crazy, and. of course, Bears.
This Week in Prison
Elected officials on the right and the left agree on at least one thing--our criminal justice system is badly broken. We incarcerate too many Americans, we treat prisoners poorly, we do a lousy job of rehabilitation, and we tend to lock up the poor and minorities much more than the rich and the white. This week, President Obama made that point by commuting the sentences of 46 people convicted of nonviolent crimes, mostly drug offenses. The next day, he delivered a speech on the topic of criminal justice reform, outlining specific goals he'd like Congress to address, and praising those across the political spectrum who are working for change (including Sens. Rand Paul (R/KY) and John Cornyn (R/TX) who he singled out for their efforts. In his press conference on Wednesday, he again name-checked Paul, and added in Sens. Dick Durbin (D/IL), Cory Booker (D/NJ), and Mike Lee (R/UT). On Thursday, he became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.
* * *
At the same NAACP convention where President Obama gave his criminal justice reform speech, former president Bill Clinton took the stage and admitted his tough-on-crime bill was a mistake. He said, "I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it."
This Week in 2016
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finally officially entered the presidential race this week. He's widely considered a front-runner, is out ahead in Iowa polling, and indeed has a fair chance at the Republican nomination.
Where he goes from there is anyone's guess. His hopes for winning the nomination rest on his record in Wisconsin. He's made all the proper right-wing moves--attacked the labor unions that help employees negotiate with the powerful for decent wages and working conditions; cut taxes for the wealthy; gutted public education, including his state's once world-class university system; denied climate change; eliminated gun safety laws. And the results of all that have been boringly predictable--the state's economy is in the toilet, promised job growth has never happened (in 2014, job growth in WI was 38th in the nation, and it's been dropping every year, as the rest of the country picks up steam).
His agenda is just right for Republican primary voters. But as we see time and time again (we're looking at you, Kansas and Louisiana) the closer any given government hews to right-wing economic dogma, the worse that economy gets. Walker governs as if his real constituents are his pals the Koch brothers, not the working people of his state. [Which is almost true--among his constituents, he's not very popular--in fact, the three governors with the lowest approval ratings in their states are now all declared candidates, with Bobby Jindal (LA) standing the least popular, then Chris Christie (NJ), then Walker. But the K-Bros still like him.]
And his problem, if he does win the nomination, is that his agenda isn't broadly popular across the country. Most Americans are in favor of actual economic growth. Most Americans believe in climate change. Most don't see anything wrong with reasonable gun safety efforts, like background checks. Most appreciate public schools and functioning universities. Most would rather see the rich pay a little more in taxes so government can do the things it needs to do.
Working with a friendly legislature, Walker has been able to enact one of the most far-right agendas in the country, and his state is paying the price. Republican primary voters might love that agenda, but in the general election, saying "Let me wreck the country like I wrecked Wisconsin" is a harder sell.
Walker's announcement speech was delivered without notes or a teleprompter, which was impressive (so was Trump's, but his sounded like somebody's grumpy uncle complaining to anyone who would listen while waiting at the bus stop). But it also demonstrated that Scott Walker is not particularly bright or knowledgeable about history--or if he is, that he hides it well.
He started the foreign policy part of his speech with this:
"During my lifetime, the best president on national security and foreign policy was a Governor from California. Under his leadership, we rebuilt our military, stood up for our friends, stood up to our enemies and - without apology - stood for American values: this led to one of the most peaceful times in modern American history.
"Today sadly, under the Obama/Clinton doctrine, America is leading from behind and we're headed toward a disaster.
"We have a President who drew a line in the sand and allowed it to be crossed. A President who called ISIS the JV squad, Yemen a success story and Iran a place we can do business with. Iran...think about that.
"My brother David and I used to tie ribbons around the tree in front of our house during the 444 days that Iran held 52 Americans hostage. One of them was Kevin Hermening who grew up down the road in Oak Creek. He was the youngest hostage - a Marine working at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
"Kevin Hermening is here today. He knows that Iran is not a place we should be doing business with. Iran hasn't changed much since he and the other hostages were released on President Reagan's first day in office.
"Looking ahead, we need to terminate the bad deal with Iran on Day One, put in place crippling economic sanctions and convince our allies to do the same."
What's wrong with that? Walker seems to forget the most pertinent facts of that era. In November 1979, Iranian radicals mobbed the American Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Those hostages were held for 444 days, released only on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration. President Jimmy Carter, of course, lost the election in large part because of his inability to get the hostages back.
It's never been definitively proven, but a considerable amount of evidence points to secret negotiations between Reagan's camp and the Iranians--negotiations that resulted in the release of the hostages on Inauguration Day, a tactic that would make Carter look weak and Reagan tough. (In real life, of course, Carter was a Navy veteran, while Reagan had spent his military years making movies.) In return for the timely release of the hostages, the theory says, Reagan arranged for shipments of arms to Iran, via Israel.
Whether or not that happened, in 1985, Reagan unquestionably arranged illegal arms sales to Iran, via Israel, and used the financial proceeds to aid terrorists in South America to whom Congress, in the Boland Amendment, had already prohibited US funding.
In other words, Walker's hero Reagan was perfectly happy to "do business with Iran," even when that business involved arming Iran, and even though he knew it to be illegal (and for which he should have been impeached). If Iran hasn't changed, Gov. Walker, why was it okay for Reagan to sell them weapons then, but not for President Obama to prevent them from having worse weapons now?
And "crippling economic sanctions?" That's what brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. It's likely, though, that our allies would have refused to go along with more sanctions if we made a deal based on the previous ones, then reneged on that deal. As Peter Beinart writes in The Atlantic, "Most major European and Asian countries have closer economic ties to Iran than does the United States, and thus more domestic pressure to resume them. These countries have abided by international sanctions against Iran, to varying degrees, because the Obama administration convinced their leaders that sanctions were a necessary prelude to a diplomatic deal. If U.S. officials reject a deal, Iran’s historic trading partners will not economically injure themselves indefinitely. Sanctions, declared Britain’s ambassador to the United States in May, have already reached 'the high-water mark,' noting that 'you would probably see more sanctions erosion' if nuclear talks fail. Germany’s ambassador added that, 'If diplomacy fails, then the sanctions regime might unravel.'"
Walker uses the word "safety" instead of "national security," which makes him sound like a school crossing guard. His grasp on foreign policy is about as solid as your average schoolboy's, so maybe that's appropriate.
He continued with this: "Earlier this year, the President proclaimed that climate change is the greatest threat to future generations. Well Mr. President, I respectfully disagree. The greatest threat to future generations is radical Islamic terrorism and we need to do something about it."
If that's truly what Walker believes, he's a fool. If he doesn't believe that, he's a liar. The threat from climate change is astronomically greater than the threat from radical Islamic terrorism. Actual experts--as opposed to pretend ones, like Walker--say we should look at climate change the way we used to look at nuclear war, as the biggest existential threat we face. As with nuclear war, we can do something about it, but not until we acknowledge its reality.
The rest of the speech was textbook Republican nonsense. Repeal Obamacare, with no suggestion as to what would replace it. Drug testing for welfare recipients*. Tax cuts for the rich, cuts in services for everyone else. Walker might be the perfect Republican for the primary voters, but he's as bad for America as he is for Wisconsin.
Side Note 1: *Drug testing for welfare recipients should be anathema to any thinking conservative, but Walker and his pet legislature want to do it so Walker will look like a tough guy. How can a small government conservative justify requiring a poor person to surrender bodily fluids, when that person has not been accused of or charged with any crime, but is only trying to receive benefits to which he or she is legally entitled? Is there a more egregious abuse of personal liberty? The Fourth Amendment rolls over in its grave every time some conservative governor signs one of these stupid programs into law.
First, they're expensive to administer--so there goes any claim of fiscal responsibility. They don't save much money by winnowing welfare recipients, but it costs money to run lab tests. Second, they're insulting to American human beings, and they're a violation of their equal protection rights. Rich people don't have to be tested to receive government benefits--and they do. Third, they're pointless. In every state that's tried it, the percentage of drug users to those tested is less than the national rate of drug use in the general population. You'd get a far higher percentage if you raided a high end disco or nightclub. Fourth, what do you do with the people who do test positive? Just block them from receiving welfare? How are they supposed to get a job after that? Why toss those people back to the streets, where they'll go hungry and become desperate? If you don't get them into a program--which costs more than you'd probably have spent on benefits--then you're doing the community, and the economy, a grave disservice.
Walker should be ashamed of touting that idea like it's a good thing. And no one who implements it in their state, in spite of all the data, should ever become president.
Side Note 2: Why don't 21st Century campaigns pay attention to the digital space? Here's what you get when you go to ReadyForWalker.com. Not exactly what he'd prefer to see.
* * *
Over the weekend, presidential candidate Jeb Bush seems to have decided to make a play for the dumb vote, saying, "You don’t have to be the world’s policeman, but we have to be the world’s leader – and there’s a huge difference. This guy, this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry, when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach – where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense, you know what I’m saying? Big-syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings – but we’re not leading, that creates chaos, it creates a more dangerous world.”
It's hard to know what he's saying, because he's barely speaking English. "Big-syllable words?" As opposed to words with small syllables? Does he mean multisyllabic words? In his statement, he's using words with three and four syllables. We're also not sure how being "nuanced" and "sophisticated" makes something not make sense--in reality, the world is full of nuance; therefore, nuanced is a more useful way to look at it than black and white.
It's also difficult to fathom what he would do as president if he and members of his administration didn't take part in "fancy conferences and meetings." Sit in the oval office talking to world leaders on Skype? Or just watch ESPN and hope things work themselves out? That's hardly leading. The fact is, the nation leads the world in one of two ways, either militarily or diplomatically. We here at TWiA World Headquarters would rather diplomacy be the first avenue, with military intervention saved as a last resort. Diplomacy rarely gets Americans killed, but military action does. If Bush wants to discount the possibility of diplomacy (which requires fancy conferences and meetings, and sometimes big-syllabled words) then he's left with only throwing American troops at every problem. That, by definition, creates a more dangerous world. If Bush wants to be president, it would behoove him to come up with a more rational approach. It would help if he used a little nuance.
* * *
Last week, Bush said Americans should work more hours. This week, he demonstrated conclusively that he doesn't know the first thing about American workers, or economics in general. If a guy wants to be president, shouldn't he study up a little?
* * *
Oh, please? Pretty please? It's the Republican dream team--Ben Carson for president, Donald Trump for VP. It's hard to imagine how Carson became a neurosurgeon, considering how he comes across as lacking any intellectual stature whatsoever. We suppose he put every brain cell into medicine, leaving none available to have even the slightest understanding of the rest of the world. As evidence, he calls Trump "a very smart guy."
And how could we have missed the comparison so obvious to this Boston Herald writer? The politician Trump most resembles? Ronald Reagan, of course. "Look at the field of candidates and who do you picture as a commanding personality, one who would not blink if eye-to-eye with some of the ruthless rulers imperiling this world today?" If that meme spreads, Scott Walker will wind up voting for Trump.
* * *
Perhaps candidate Rick (Man on Dog) Santorum needs to watch some more episodes of Schoolhouse Rock. In an appearance this week, Santorum asked, "When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on everything?"
Since the "everything" in this case is a matter of Constitutional interpretation, the easy answer to that question, of course, is Article III, Section 1 of the US Constitution. You could also add the decision in 1803's Marbury v. Madison. At any rate, it's been that way for all of Santorum's life, and the lives of many Santorums before him.
* * *
We have long claimed that the economic forces pushing ever more wealth into ever fewer hands is not some natural law, but the result of deliberate policy choices made over the last 40 years or so--and that, because it was deliberate, it can be undone by adopting different policies. This week, in a major economic address, candidate Hillary Clinton indicated that she agrees with that position, and offered some ways to counteract the trend. Fivethirtyeight.com looks at some of the numbers behind her speech.
This Week in Disgrace
This is a national outrage: "In the most detailed nationwide inventory of untested rape kits ever, USA TODAY and journalists from more than 75 Gannett newspapers and TEGNA TV stations have found at least 70,000 neglected kits in an open-records campaign covering 1,000-plus police agencies – and counting. Despite its scope, the agency-by-agency count covers a fraction of the nation's 18,000 police departments, suggesting the number of untested rape kits reaches into the hundreds of thousands."
...
"The U.S. Department of Justice is failing to comply with a 2013 law that was meant to get more rape kits tested and set national protocols for processing sexual assault evidence."
Attorney General Loretta Lynch should be called on the carpet and made to comply with the law that her predecessor apparently ignored. Reach the DOJ here.
This Week in Damages
How much damage has Grover Norquist done to America with his idiotic "never raise taxes for anything" pledge? It's probably incalculable; it's certainly astronomical. And the next time anybody calls the Republicans the party of "fiscal responsibility," laugh in their face, because they are anything but.
This Week in the Crazy
Operation Jade Helm 15 kicked off this week. If your friends and family who oppose Obama have gone missing, that's why. Look for them in the detention zones underneath Walmart.
Sadly, that's not even the craziest theory. Talking Points Memo reports on some others:
"Next News Network, a conspiracy theory website co-founded by Gary Franchi, the former chair of Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) super PAC, noted that the start of the 'Jade Helm 15' exercise coincides with a Druidic cremation ceremony performed by a secret society of America's Republican elite.
The Bohemian Club, which has counted former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan among its members, meets every year in early July at a Redwood grove in Monte Rio, California. There, the club performs a ritual known as the 'Cremation of the Care' where members burn a coffin effigy in a show of forest-worship.
Next News Network stated in a YouTube video that July 15 not only marks the start of 'Jade Helm 15,' but also the cremation ritual. The outlet speculated that the ritual 'actually represents the physical manifestation of the cremation of America.'"
Also...
"Right Wing Watch recently flagged a segment from an outlet called TruNews Christian radio in which host Rick Wiles said he believed that the government would go as far as deploying an 'EMP' attack -- an electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a nuclear weapon in orbit -- against states that resist the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
"'Washington has no intentions of giving up any power to any state,' Wiles said. 'And certainly not to the common citizens.'
"'That may explain why Jade Helm 15 is taking place in the South and the Western states this summer, because they know that people are starting to rise up and saying ‘something’s got to happen,' he added. 'Either we take a stand, or it’s over. It’s finished.'”
Then again, maybe it's the Russians.
Also, too, still more crazy. And more--in Christoval, Texas, people are burying their guns to hide them from the jack-booted storm troopers coming to confiscate them.
But fear not, loyal Americans. These guys are on the case. "If a team member sees two Humvees full of soldiers driving through town, they're going to follow them. And they're going to radio back their ultimate location." Nothing to worry about there...
This Week in Arizona
America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM ran into another legal roadblock this week, when Judge Murray Snow declined to recuse himself from AMCSTM's civil contempt proceedings. The Phoenix New Times quotes from Snow's ruling:
"'[The] movants are responsible for creating the circumstances that they now offer as grounds for their Motion,' Snow writes, adding, 'The Ninth Circuit is clear that a party cannot effect recusal of a trial judge by its own actions.'
"Snow continues, stating that, '[Arpaio and Sheridan] instigated the Montgomery matter and have controlled the investigation and the limited disclosures to date concerning its subject, scope, outcome, and relevance to [the contempt hearings]. By bringing the Motion, Movants stalled additional discovery into the Montgomery materials from occurring. This kind of...strategic manipulation is what [the law] (and its timeliness requirement) explicitly does not allow.'"
In simpler language, a person facing a judge can't create a situation that then requires that judge's recusal; otherwise, no trial of a guilty person (since the innocent have no need of such delaying tactics--they're usually in a hurry to prove their innocents) would ever reach a conclusion.
The "Montgomery" mentioned above has long been known as a con man; despite that, he was hired by AMCSTM's team as a "confidential informant" to provide information discrediting Snow--and paid at least $120,000 in taxpayer money. Instead of information, he provided a raft of bogus "information" that didn't stand up to even casual scrutiny. If AMCSTM watched anything but himself on the news, he might not have fallen for Montgomery's Snow job. Now we know for certain that AMCSTM is a sucker as well as a crook.
* * *
Maricopa County also settled a lawsuit on AMCSTM's behalf this week, though not happily. County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said, "The Sheriff's office put us in a situation we never should have been in." That's undeniably true--Maricopa County voters should never have voted to reelect such a hopelessly corrupt, embarrassing spectacle of a lawman in the first place.
* * *
In other AMCSTM-related news, he demonstrated once again that the most dangerous spot in Maricopa County is between him and a camera, which explains his weakness to be seen with even the lamest of celebrities. He appeared on stage with presidential candidate Donald Trump (R, for the moment), for a big anti-immigration rally in Phoenix. As has become usual with Trump's anti-immigrant rants, this one was essentially fact-free and insulting not only of the Mexican people but of listener's intelligence.
Trump estimated the size of the crowd at 15,000. His campaign said 10,000. CNN called it 5,000, and Politico said 4,000. We tend to trust Politico's or CNN's judgment more than Trump's, since he's known for inflating everything far beyond actual proportions. Also because at the venue at the Phoenix Convention Center, the maximum occupancy is less than 5,000. They might have squeezed in 5K, but they didn't get 10K in. Trump's still doing well in the polls, which causes us to wonder why Republican voters are so easily swayed by a guy whose every utterance drips with hatred for anyone who's not Donald Trump. We can only hope that when he doesn't get the Republican nomination, his ego forces him to run as a third-party candidate, so we can identify the nation's most hate-filled and gullible people.
Politico shows us just how gullible (and generally uninformed) Trump fans can be.
"'He says what he means like I do. He’s not wishy-washy,' said Joan Rosicki, 67, of Phoenix. 'He’s for the people. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. He also is for the Spanish people. I am, too. We just don’t like the lawlessness.' She said she had been a fan of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie until he took a helicopter ride with, and hugged, President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Of the president, she said, 'he wants to be a dictator. I don’t know if he’s ever going to leave. My friends all told me he has to because of the First Amendment.'"
No, Ms. Rosicki, the First Amendment doesn't say anything about the length of a presidential term. President Obama knows that his two terms can't total more than 8 years, and he has no interest in extending them. Also, people from Mexico aren't Spanish--Spanish people are from Spain.
Interestingly, Trump seems to disagree with Jeb Bush. Bush said the president is too smart and uses too many big words (or something to that effect--again, kind of hard to get what he was driving at), but Trump says "I love the Mexican people … I respect Mexico … but the problem we have is that their leaders are much sharper, smarter and more cunning than our leaders..." And while Bush seems to be implying that we don't want a smart person as president, Trump assures us, "I’m, like, a really smart person."
We're not sure in what respect he's like a smart person, since he has yet to demonstrate that.
Side Note: Whatever else one might say about Donald Trump, he has already performed a great service for America, one that makes his entire candidacy a gift to us all. He's caused Berke Breathed to revive Bloom County, one of the greatest comic strips of all time, after a 25-year hiatus. Here's the first new strip.
(Thanks to TWiA cartoonist correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)
Not only that, but he drew David Letterman out of retirement for a new Top 10 List.
An Opus sketch from Berkley Breathed, way back when Bloom County was still a newspaper strip.
* * *
Arizona's senior senator, John McCain (R), has often been criticized by the far right for not being crazy enough, and by everybody else for being too crazy. Also too grumpy. He has vowed to run again in 2016, despite being 11,004 years old, but now he's picked up a primary challenger who'll really show people what crazy is: state senator Kelli (Chemtrails) Ward. If he's disturbed by the onslaught of Tea Party-oriented lunatics, he largely has himself to blame. Selecting one of their number as his running mate in 2008 had much to do with legitimizing their brand, and she's been stirring them up ever since. It's a good thing we never came close to having him in the White House, and her a heartbeat away--the prospect is really too terrifying to think about for long.
This Week in Bears
Once again, we're extending the boundaries of "America" to include Canada, since it is, after all, part of North America. A conservation officer in Canada was ordered to kill two bear cubs, after their mother was killed. Instead, the officer took the adorable cubs to a rehabilitation center, where they can be taught to be wild bears. Now his job is in jeopardy.
There's a petition at Change.org asking for him to get his job back. Sign it if you can.
We here at TWiA World Headquarters have a fondness for bakeries. So does this bear. But we've never eaten 24 pies in a single sitting.
Cookies, on the other hand... ;)
Posted by: Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell | 07/17/2015 at 10:15 PM
24 cookies are no problem. Theyre much smaller than pies.
Posted by: Jeff Mariotte | 07/18/2015 at 08:21 AM