Breitbart's Cuban Butthurt

Surely, more like a victory for common sense, abandoning a long-standing decades-long policy of isolation, that, multiple dead US Presidents later, was still failing to bring about regime-change in Cuba ?  This, on top of other accomplishments by Obama in the last couple of years, his continuing support of the right-wing capitalistic establishment aside, is making it harder and harder for me to maintain my disapproval of the guy.  I may still not agree with the guy 100%*, but compared to Dubya...or worse still, the lunatics even further to Dubya's right ?...

And yet, I get the impression from Breitbart that I'm meant to be outraged, incensed even over the idea of the flag of a 'communist dictatorship' flying in DC...

Former ambassadors, murderous guerrilla icons, and even folk singers have descended upon Washington, D.C. today to celebrate the raising of the Cuban flag over the newly-minted embassy of the communist dictatorship in America.

Cuban state media is treating the event, which has no analog at the American embassy in Havana, as a victory over the American people.

Erm, is the People's Republic of China, which has agents online and in person infilitrating US' governmental agencies and businesses left, right, and centre, not a communist dictatorship ?  A country that bullies the US' allies and has nuclear weapons pointed at the US.  And even Vietnam, for that matter, are they not considered a communist dictatorship ?  Oh, and that last line is bullshit, as the raising of the US flag in Havana is specifically planned to coincide with the visit of, I believe, John Kerry, in the country.

The State Department has raised the Cuban flag over the new embassy in Washington, D.C. while the American embassy remains barren in Havana, though operating officially as an embassy. It released its first press release today as an official embassy and not the Office of American Interests. It will be run by interim head Jeffrey DeLaurentis as Congress gears up to oppose the appointment of any ambassador to the communist dictatorship so long as the Castro regime continues to flagrantly violate human rights.

So the PRC doesn't violate human rights ?  How about Saudi Arabia ?  How about unquestionable Israel, the ultimate third rail of American politics ?  You would be willing to shut down the Israeli embassy over criticism of treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank ?

Granma, the official propaganda outlet for the Cuban government, is treating the ceremony as a victory for the communist revolution. In an article quoting the various members of the delegation to D.C., a number of them described the flag-raising ceremony as analogous to a military victory against America. Pez Ferro, who participated in the 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks that made Fidel Castro a nationally-recognized terrorist, told Granma that the flag-raising ceremony proves the communists “were in the right.” “This confirms that former policies were a failure,” he states, as well as “the recognition of the resistance of a country that did not cede to pressure despite not being a great power like its rival.”

Well, as for a communist victory, obviously they're fantasists.  They have a point regarding the failure of US policies towards Cuba, but, either way, why so much butt-hurt ?

I suppose, ultimately, it's a similar case as with Viet Nam.  Right-wingers in the US can never get over the idea that they were legitimately defeated, almost exactly as the British were defeated by their ancestors, via the guerrilla tactics of the ordinary populace.  A narrative has to be adopted, that somehow, the media were to blame, lefty liberals like Jane Fonda, traitors in the established political parties with insufficient will to crush the...'enemy.'  The 'enemy' who happened to be pawns on one side of the political chessboard than the other, and the same 'enemy' who are today coveted 'allies'.

Once, and perhaps future, ally of the US, Cuba, was condemned and demonised for similar reasons as other 'Communist' countries of the 'fifties and 'sixties, most of which are today, whether they nominally identify as Communist or not, eagerly courted and fêted by the West.  I suspect that a decade from now, right-wingers in the US will be talking about Cuba, much as they would talk today about Vietnam, and with their own current hyperbole conveniently forgotten.


* Well, not even close to that.

Undemocratic Body Undemocratically Appointed Horror

Last week it was revealed that despite a pre-election promise to base the number of appointed peers on party vote share, Mr Cameron is now prevaricating. He said: “I have committed previously to keeping the party peers under review and will, of course, give further consideration to the points you raise when we come to consider recommendations over the course of this parliament.”

But the fact is the Liberal Democrats – who got just 2.4 million votes on May 7th, compared to UKIP’s 3.8 million – are expected to be awarded more peers once again, while UKIP and the Green Party get no further representation in Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber.

Mr Hannan, who is known to be overtly hostile to UKIP, despite long-standing rumours of his defection from the Conservative Party, took to Twitter today to blast the Prime Minister:

Wait, wha...Are you sure about that ?  I haven't paid attention to Hannan for a while, but I'd almost have assumed he was a member of UKIP by now, given the ferocity of his Euroscepticism and his almost career-long stint as an MEP.

The LibDems shouldn't get a single peer until @ukip, @TheGreenParty and others have reached the proportionality demanded by... the LibDems.

— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) July 16, 2015

Anyways, I just don't understand all this moaning about the composition of the House of Lords. It's as if the critics don't get, or are pretending not to get, the fact that the institution is fundamentally undemocratic...by design. That an institution that stood as a sort of brake on democratic excesses in its more traditional form had been turned into an exercise in pure cronyism by Tony Blair.

It's a bit like the Democrats in the US still whining about Al Gore having won the popular vote in 2000, when they haven't made any serious efforts whatsoever since to abolish the electoral college. Not that the electoral college was intended to subvert democracy, unlike Tone's anti-democratic 'constitutional reforms.'

Play the FPTP game right, and maybe one day you too in UKIP can give your defeated MP's a cushy retirement in the Lords. And you too can stack the body with as many peers as necessary to quash any possibility of dissent. But first of course, you need find victory in an electoral system that is specifically designed to shut out third-party opposition and maintain established power at all costs. Sucks, don't it ?

The Spectator: The transatlantic flirtation behind Ukip’s sudden meltdown

I have no idea the degree to which, or if any of this is true, but it was long clear that Breitbart was in the bag for UKIP, probably as much if not more so than the Express.

What’s happened to poor Ukip? Not so long ago, they seemed unstoppable. They were revolting on the right, terrifying the left and shaking up Westminster. The established parties tried sneering at them, smearing them, even copying them. Nothing worked. Then came the general election, the centre held, and Ukip seemed to fall apart. Farage failed to win his target seat in South Thanet, the focus of his whole campaign. He resigned, then farcically unresigned, three days later.

...

Here’s the strange thing, though: the election was not a disaster for Ukip. It was a triumph. They won 3.9 million votes — 3 million more than in 2010, and 1.5 million more than the Liberal Democrats. If that rate of growth, or anything like it, were to continue, by 2020 Nigel Farage could well be prime minister. So why has the party sabotaged itself?

To begin to understand, it helps to cross the Atlantic and meet Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of a mysteriously rich right-wing website called Breitbart....

The company Bannon runs is one of a large number of media organisations that exploit what Richard Hofstadter called the ‘paranoid style’ in US politics. Breitbart specialises in stoking up Middle American rage at big government and the liberal elite. Its founder, Andrew Breitbart, was a charismatic muckraker who worked with Matt Drudge, author of the Drudge Report and probably the most influential right-winger of the internet age. Breitbart’s site was generating huge amounts of online traffic when suddenly, at the age of 43, he dropped dead. (The coroner said heart failure; some of Breitbart’s keenest admirers say that he was poisoned by Barack Obama’s secret agents, which says something about them.) People expected Breitbart’s website to die with him but, under Bannon’s stewardship, it just got bigger. It is today a profitable company — though its press office refuses to say where the profit comes from.

The rise of Breitbart on the new media scene chimed nicely with the rise of the Tea Party, the amorphous movement within American conservatism that rose to prominence after the election of Barack Obama and the financial crash. Breitbart became essential reading for embittered American right-wingers, of whom there is no shortage.

...

A spokesman for Breitbart insisted that the London office was not established to support any political party. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for Breitbart London to become a Ukip cheerleader....

Breitbart staff were alarmed at the lack of editorial independence. ‘We effectively became the Ukip comms office,’ says one employee. ‘Any criticism of the sainted Farage was completely banned,’ says another. It’s understood that Delingpole and Kassam fell out over the site’s pro-Ukip line.

...

British politicians are easily seduced by American money and power, and it seems Farage, for all his anti-elitism, was no exception. In The Purple Revolution, he positively gushes about his four days in September in the land of the free. He describes a friendly meeting with Rupert Murdoch (‘We are both outsiders who despise the establishment’), an equally amicable encounter with presidential hopeful Rand Paul (‘my political doppelgänger’) and a dinner, hosted by Breitbart in their Washington office overlooking Capitol Hill, in which he sat next to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Tea Party darling, and the popular talk-radio host Laura Ingraham.

It must have felt like the beginnings of a special relationship. By learning from American experts, Farage believed he could turn Ukip into a more professional outfit. Kassam and Richardson put him in touch with strategists and activists who specialised in ‘micro-campaigning’ and social media. At the same time, Breitbart and the Tea Party’s leadership saw in Farage a man with whom they could do business — a conservative quite unlike David Cameron, who had spent so long toadying up to Obama. Moreover, the Americans wanted to learn from Ukip how a new party could rattle the established order — since the Tea Party, for all its noise, had never broken out on its own, or caused any meaningful shift in the Grand Old Party.

Back home, Ukip staff quickly got fed up with what they called the ‘Tea Party tendency’ and Farage’s ‘mad love affair’ with the American right. In February, Farage annoyed his followers by missing the first day of Ukip’s spring conference in Margate because he was giving a speech to a half-empty room at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. ‘The party was seething and baffled,’ says one insider. ‘It was a major moment for Ukip and the leader wasn’t there.’

There were also growing concerns about a change in Ukip’s ‘messaging’. Farage is said to have developed a ‘shock and awe’ strategy, which involved making deliberately outrageous statements to arouse the ire of the despised political and media class. For instance, in a television debate, Farage suggested that the NHS should not treat foreigners with Aids. That prompted fury from politically correct commentators, as expected, but it also disturbed quite a few natural conservatives. ‘Shock and awful,’ said a senior Ukip source.

In an interview with Trevor Phillips, Farage also referred to a ‘fifth column’ of Muslims in this country — which led to rumours that, rather than running an election campaign, he was aiming for a well-paid gig on Fox News.

...

Ukip seemed to be waging an American-style culture war — but the British didn’t appear to be interested. From October to election day, the party’s standing in the polls fell from 18 to 13 per cent. The dip can’t all be pinned on Ukip’s drift towards Tea Party politics, but a number of Kippers feel that Farage’s infatuation with America distracted him from his mission at a crucial moment, and unbalanced the delicate ecosystem that had allowed the party to flourish.

Which might explain why, after the election, Ukip’s leadership turned on itself so viciously....

I never imagined they were so explicitly inter-connected however.

Breitbart: Obama Thinks Iran is...'Rational' !

Gasp.  <Faints>  How dare he speak so of our former alliesthe evil empire that is the Satanic Republic of Iranistan ?

Okay, okay, let's get to it...

However, the most interesting point reported by The Times of Israel, is Obama’s opinion of the Iranian regime.

(Reported by The Times of Israel !  Not like we can't just read the damn transcript for ourselves)

Goldberg asked Obama if the fact that the Iranian regime is anti-Semitic, and thus possessed of a warped view of the way the world works, shouldn’t preclude a negotiating strategy that treats Tehran as a rational player. But the president replied that the regime’s survival instinct is more powerful than other calculations, including its hatred of Jews and imperialist aspirations.

“Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival,” he said. “It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

Tehran, he continued, won’t make irrational decisions — an apparent reference to the regime breaking away to a nuclear weapon or attacking another country — that would threaten its very survival. “What we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have,” he said.

Just shocking.  I can't believe he said all that.  It's just outrageous !  What is wrong with the man ?

Obama is right. Iran is suffering severe internal problems. Rampant, out of control drug abuse, obscene levels of corruption, and severe economic problems are tearing at the foundations of the Iranian tyranny.

According to the Daily Mail, around seven per cent of Iran’s population remain addicted to hard drugs. On top of Iran’s already hideous problems with the flood of dirt cheap opium and heroin pouring out of Afghanistan, Iran has lately acquired a dangerous taste for crystal meth.

Okay, just WTF now ?

...

For all we know, the Supreme Leader of Iran himself could be a meth addict – suffering drug induced psychosis, paranoia, experiencing drug induced delusions about his own mission to remake the world, lusting for the destructive might which nuclear weapons would grant to his addled megalomanic fantasies.

Hitler was a well known meth addict  – under the influence of meth, he ordered the commission of irrational atrocities, such as the infamous Nero decree, Hitler’s order to destroy everything of value which might be seized by advancing Russian soldiers. The Nero decree was not executed – Albert Speer, in the final days of the war disobeyed Hitler, and refused to pointlessly destroy the infrastructure of Germany. But an occasional outbreak of reason was more the exception than the norm, in Hitler’s meth fuelled Reich.

And that's how the 'article' ends.  Reductio ad Hitlerum.  Shit.


For all we know, Bill Clinton could be a lizard-person from an alternate dimension.  George W Bush could have been an elaborate AI construct in the matrix. Vladimir Putin could be the second coming of Christ as understood in the cryptic version of the Gospel of Judas.  Steve Jobs could have been secretly an Arab (well, not really a secret as such).  Margaret Thatcher could have had a secret sexual obsession with Ken Livingstone.  For all we know, Ayn Rand could have been a rabidly anti-Christian atheist (uh, well, actually...)  Stalin could have had a really vulnerable soft spot for puppies, and secretly donated to funds for orphans.  For all we know, Luke Skywalker could have been the bastard child of Darth Vader.  For all we know, John McCain's anti-aging regimen could involve the daily bathing in the blood of Mexican babies.  For all we know, the staff at Breitbart might contain an actual journalist or two.... What after all....do we...actually...know ?


So easy, and ultimately futile (given the audience) to mock, but the full interview is arguably worth reading...okay, skimming, especially if you want to skip the facile spin than the traditional outlets will inevitably want to place on it:  http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/obama-interview-iran-isis-israel/393782/


Below the fold, here's how the interview ends, and the part that I personally found the most interesting:

Breitbart haz a Brilliant Idea

(Headline courtesy Breitbart & UKIP, stupid captions courtesy MS Paint)

Well, if you're looking to convince that percentage of the electorate that isn't already convinced that LibLabCon are all the same, and further strengthen UKIP & the SNP into the bargain, then yeah, go for it !  And take care to make the most of what may be your last government for a good long while.

In Defence of Dumbfuckery

Er, Digby...just why exactly would you assume the young lady in question is confusing  her 'pseudo-scandals' ?  And wait, is Watergate a 'pseudo-scandal' now or 'the greatest political scandal in American history' ?

Really, there's three questions to ask here:

1. Was Hillary involved in the Watergate hearings ?
2. Did Hillary lie at the Watergate hearings ?
3. Is a self-confessed fan of Ted Cruz likely to care about the actual facts regarding 1 or 2 if they support a current right-wing meme ?

We could answer our first question with a quick trip to Wikipedia, but hey, 'anyone can edit Wikipedia' right ?  (Well, sorta...)  So how about a reference to oh, I don't know...The William J. Clinton Presidential Library say ?

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary entered Yale Law School where she met Bill Clinton. In 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Hillary worked on the staff assisting the House Judiciary Committee with its investigation of the Nixon administration.

So, yeah.

Hillary Rodham (center), a lawyer for the Rodino Committee and John Doar (left), chief counsel for the committee, bring impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in the Judiciary Committee hearing room at the U.S. Capitol in 1974 in Washington.

Short answer to our second question is that no-one knows for sure except perhaps Hillary.  But it does seem to be quite the right-wing meme that Hillary was fired from the Watergate hearings by Jerry Zeifman for lying, based on an article by one Dan Calabrese.  Snopes calls it False, and says that in fact Mister Zeifman had no authority to fire her (...but would if he could...), but it does sound like his recollections on the subject over the years have been changeable.

And again in 1998, Zeifman was undeniably quoted in a Scripps Howard News Service article as confirming that not only did he not "fire" Hillary, but that it was not even within his power to do so:

Jerome Zeifman, chief Democratic counsel on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 ... does not have flattering memories of Rodham's work on the committee. "If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her," he said.

So, she wasn't actually fired, and we certainly can't prove she lied, but that's not really important, because one guy said she's a liar...and...we get to link Hillary's name in a negative way to another famous political scandal.  Which leads us to...

Pregunta número tres.  Well, who are you going to believe ?  Snopes ?  'The Liberal Media' ?
Or Daily Kos...sorry, Fox News, Hot Air, Breitbart, and Rush Limbaugh ?

I think you already know the answer to that.  And you know what, Amber *Liberty Girl* is free to believe what she wants, even if that's that Vince Foster was murdered to prevent him talking about a secret deal with the UN to take away everyone's guns and/or a secret lesbian tryst between Hillary and Janet Reno.  And she's young, so she may yet one day evolve out of the right-wing media bubble.

Give her a chance maybe ?  After all, I'm making an awful lot of assumptions about her political background (as is Digby) based on a quick perusal of her Twitter feed.  It may be that she just genuinely doesn't trust Auntie Hill.  I don't blame her for that if that's the score.  I don't either.