Video: GOP Rep responds to Dem charges of Benghazi witch hunt: "Well that must mean there's a witch somewhere" http://t.co/2kDFPjs8bu #logic
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen) May 9, 2014
Apart from Decline & Fall, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Mustang Bobby
Cue the flying monkeys; everyone on stage for the meltdown number!
Morzer
At this rate, the Onion might as well give up and go home. How do you write jokes in an age when the GOP is populated by such slobbering morons?
Baud
The witch is in Delaware, not Benghazi.
Ruckus
@Morzer:
The Onion does it with style and class, two things conservatives lack in any measurable amounts.
dan
Figured it was a short matter of time before they made the connection of”witch hunt” with Hillary starring as the witch.
Josie
It’s probably a very good thing that I am not personally acquainted with any of these people. Statements like that make me want to shake a person and shout, “What in the world are you thinking? Wake up and listen to yourself!” I keep wondering if they really are that stupid or if they are just trying to appeal to people who are that stupid.
/rant over
Violet
Can Dems conduct a criminal hunt in the Republican party. Because that must mean there are criminals somewhere in there.
Morzer
@Josie:
Not either… or, but both… and.
Cassidy
I’ve been moving this week. Haven’t worked out at all because during said move I strained a muscle in my back. I’m already cranky as shit from no gym time. I think it’s time to start putting heads on pikes.
SatanicPanic
Wait, what?
Makes me think of this
MY DAD’S NOT A PHONE, DUH!
srv
Teh Gays have won in Arkansas now
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but Larry Wilmore is taking over for Stephen Colbert. The Minority Report replaces The Colbert Report. Good call, Comedy Central!
ETA: Edited to correct some fat-finger shit.
different-church-lady
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S WITCHES!
MomSense
@Josie:
All of them, Katie.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@SiubhanDuinne: Beat me to it. I’ll blame the distraction from the draft.
Morzer
@different-church-lady:
Lesbian witches roaming the country trying to kidnap Michelle Bachmann!
JDM
Hey, it worked in Salem!
Howard Beale IV
First, they have to find a coven-but the GOP is too stupid to know what the fuck a coven is.
Frankensteinbeck
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wilmore is clever and funny. That could be good. Especially if they frame it as a takeover of the original show.
Villago Delenda Est
“Secretary Clinton, please sit on this large scale so we can determine if you weigh the same as a duck.”
Damn, I can riff on this all night from memory.
“What do you burn apart from witches?”
“NEAR SHERIFFS!”
Violet
@SiubhanDuinne: Seriously? OMG, that’s AWESOME! I love Larry Wilmore! Excellent choice!
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: I really wish (witch?) they’d have greater success in their endeavor, because if anyone needs to be kidnapped away from mics and cameras, it’s Michellle Bachmann.
Oh, wait, there’s also Sarah Palin, Marsha Blackburn, Virginia Foxx….
Morzer
You know, for people who supposedly care passionately about English being the national language, conservatives sure are remarkably ignorant of how it works.
Morzer
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s ok, you can say the word coven. Evil witches have them too.
JGabriel
So does that mean we should start referring to the Benghazi Commission/Witch-hunt/Clown Show/Teahadi/Jackass Parade/Whatever They’re Calling It as the Salem Trials?
Morzer
@different-church-lady:
What exactly are you saying about the Speaker?
dmsilev
Isn’t one Gingrich enough?
dmsilev
@srv:
What about irrational reasons? I’m pretty sure the conservatives have plenty of those.
Morzer
@dmsilev:
A Newtered Gingrich is a better Gingrich.
Howard Beale IV
@Villago Delenda Est:
Those aren’t witches-they’re harpies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Since when has being a witch illegal in America?
Morzer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Witching while black will get you every time.
Ian
@Howard Beale IV:
I dunno… I’ve heard some crazy rants about how liberal arts colleges are “secret lesbian covens”
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
You’d need a supertanker to transport them all.
Anne Laurie
@dmsilev: Remember how well Gingrich’s last little witch-hunt went for the GOP? As in “Target (Clinton) re-elected by a generous margin?”
Yes?
Well, apparently the squatting GOP members don’t.
Jay S
Now they are trying to take us back to the 1690’s.
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: 1787, when Jehovah dropped The Constitution on Philly. Article III, paragraph 17: Thou shalt not suffer a witch (or a wizard) to live.
Well, so much for the DC basketball team…
Howard Beale IV
@Ian: Well, wikipedia defines covens as a gathering of witches, which, by definition, are female. The whole liberal arts colleges and lesbian thins sounds like a Gohmert-ism to me.
Morzer
@Ian:
Funny isn’t it how a bunch of illiterate old white men know all about those secret lesbian covens?
Mustang Bobby
@Josie: To quote myself: “The problem with stupid people is that they don’t know that they’re stupid because if they did know they were stupid they wouldn’t be stupid in the first place.”
Villago Delenda Est
So, I’m thinking that Pete Sessions is right, and there is a witch.
Turns out it’s Minerva McGonagall, and she’s going to give him a beatdown similiar to the one she gave when she assessed the competence of that Umbridge woman to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.,
another Holocene human
World premiere of the Frozen suite at UF Phillip Center tonight. Sorry not to give a heads up. I thought I’d was a month from now.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Hundreds of years. There are anti-witchcraft laws on the books in many (most?) states. The US is full of laws that have been forgotten, like laws not to have ice cream cones in your pockets on Main Street.
SatanicPanic
I can’t believe no one has made a Christine O’Donnell joke yet.
ranchandsyrup
My wife’s post on the tradeoffs involved with being a mom
Josie
@SatanicPanic: Check Baud at #3.
Morzer
@SatanicPanic:
Try comment #3 in this thread and then flagellate yourself severely.
SatanicPanic
@Josie: @Morzer: IN MY FACE! Damn. I go cry now.
JustRuss
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ll never forget Wilmore on TDS’ coverage of the ’08 Obama victory, as he’s taking a tape measure to the TDS set:
Stewart: Larry, what are you doing?
Wilmore: Anything I want, Jon!
Iowa Old Lady
So are the Ds going to participate on this committee? Last I heard, they were debating.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Yes indeed, if Facebook rumors are to be trusted.
Shana
@Howard Beale IV: “harpies” FTW
scav
Well, on that line of reasoning, there’s a needle in every haystack; interior Ag plating to all cumulo-nimbus; a snark in every hunting preserve; the Yeti is ready for the Welcome Wagon; the Higgs Boson Nobel is overdue and, oh dear, Climate Chage is real!
Bob In Portland
Reports from Mariupol were that a unit of Kiev’s soldiers in an armored unit went into the center of town, shot some civilians and burned down a municipal building. Then retreated.
Seems to me with an army of 30,000 that after a month all the Kiev government has to show for its operations in the east are some dead civilians and a burned down police station. The locals even rebuilt the barricades after the soldiers left.
This leads to a couple of questions. First, was the “national guard unit” used today part of the fascist bully boy recruitment that Minister Parubiy promised? It would explain the indiscriminate shooting of civilians standing in the street.
Second, how come the Ukrainian army has so little to show for a month of military operations? Can it be that the soldiers don’t want to shoot on their fellow citizens (with the exception of the fascist-recruited units)?
Third, does the government in Kiev think that they’re winning hearts and minds of people by this operation?
Finally, how do my dear friends here at Balloon Juice think that this is going to end?
SiubhanDuinne
@JustRuss:
LOL, I remember that but had completely forgotten!
I think this is a really good move. Hope Wilmore can keep on top of a 30-minutes-a-night schedule. If CC gives him a solid writing and production team, I think he’ll be terrific.
Morzer
@Bob In Portland:
You’ll drop dead from conspiracy theory burnout?
Shana
@SiubhanDuinne: Not just Facebook rumors. It’s the top story at HuffPo and the NYT has a story about it too.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman:
I tuned into the Rangers radio feed just to keep from being bored while I do the dishes, and I swear I’m not making this up, the first words I hear are, “Crosby’s complaining to the refs…”
Then about 10 minutes later the color guy says, “See, here’s the difference between the Bruins and Pittsburgh — the Bruins, if they’re going to come after you, they’ll come after you. Pittsburgh will just kind of slap at you.” My jaw was on the floor.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland:
“Never” is my bet.
Villago Delenda Est
Noisemax strikes again!
McConnell Wins Back Tea Party Nation
What, all five of the members?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: HODOR!
Citizen_X
@SiubhanDuinne: Why The Minority Report? It’s not like there’s racism anymore!
Seriously, though: good move. I always wanted Wilmore to be on TDS more often.
Ruckus
@Morzer:
Two things.
1. Has no friends, not on this blog, I’d almost bet money anywhere else either.
2. We don’t have that kind of luck.
BruceFromOhio
@Mustang Bobby:
Well said, Ed. Well said.
Citizen_X
@scav: So there is interstellar ether after all!
Morzer
@different-church-lady:
Please, please, tell me that Bobby Romanov isn’t one of those CIA zombies he likes going on about so much.
scav
Be-BiP-a-boo-bop is just showing his logical solidarity with witch-based reasoning. Also, he is consistent in one thing at least: his baseline measure for friendship is about as stringent as his baseline measure for the reality of reported events.
Bob In Portland
@Ruckus: Why doesn’t anyone want to discuss Ukraine? The chance of a war doesn’t float your boats? You like the US involved in Ukraine, or not? Or are you incapable of thinking about this?
Bob In Portland
Gee, nothing but ad hominems. No honest responses to my questions. Gee, you folks are acting like Republicans.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: Maybe we do want to discuss Ukraine.
Maybe we just don’t want to discuss Ukraine with you
Maybe. So many possibilities in the world!
Ash Can
Johnny Boehner’s right. These hearings won’t be a circus. Nope. Not at all. Uh-uh. No clown cars, no pies in the face, no seltzer down the pants, none of that. All completely serious. And mature. And sensible. Yup.
I think there should be three Dems on the committee. We can refer to them as Joel (or Mike, if you prefer), Crow, and Tom Servo.
Morzer
@Bob In Portland:
You mean you are…. a WITCH?!
different-church-lady
@Ash Can:
Thread. Win. All that all that.
scav
Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact.
You’ve earned your credibility.
Bob In Portland
@different-church-lady: But you don’t discuss Ukraine here at Balloon Juice. You seem to need to punch a hippie but you can’t wrap your mind around the biggest foreign relations event now.
I’m curious. I’ve asked this before but I just got more ad hominems. What were your positions about bombing Libya, about invading Iraq, about invading Afghanistan? It seems to me that you here are buying every piece of propaganda that is thrown your way. Just like Saddam and all the others, we must hate Putin and our nation’s actions are based on that hatred. Were you all that way during past international crises?
Before Iraq I knew that the Bush Administration was lying. How? I didn’t rely on the NY Times for one thing. Did you believe Bush, because it seems no one here seems to question the US narrative on Ukraine now? Or maybe some of you do, but you don’t have the courage to go against the crowd. No one seems concerned about the fascists in the Ukrainian government because Putin…
I misjudged this site. I thought it was a group of liberal, progressive thinkers. You conform your thoughts to your blinders. If Rachel Maddow doesn’t mention it then it’s territory too far for you folks to go. There seems to be an unspoken fear here that you find with conformists.
I know you will eventually figure out what’s going on in Ukraine, but once again it will be too late. It’s already too late for the people burned in that trade building in Odessa.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland: So basically, you don’t understand what the word “maybe” means.
Cassidy
@Bob In Portland: Nice talking points. Copy and paste from Facebook?
Cassidy
@different-church-lady: Or propaganda.
Bob In Portland
@scav: Ad hominem reasoning? But you can’t voice an opinion on the questions I asked.
That’s pretty pitiful. At least Gin & Tonic would answer with links to Ukrainian-language sites before he accused me of being an agent of Moscow.
I asked if the unit that attacked Mariupol today was one of those fascist Right Sektor units that Parubiy promised to send to the east. That question is undoubtedly rhetorical because you probably have no idea about the Right Sektor.
The second question should at least invite some speculation. Why, after a month, has the 30,000-man army sent into eastern Ukraine only burned down a police station and killed a few civilians? This isn’t an army of lemurs. No one here at Balloon can manage to speculate?
Probably none of you can speculate because it doesn’t conform to the propaganda you’ve been given. Something’s wrong with a government whose army doesn’t respond to commands. Parubiy says that his “anti-terror” campaign will continue. Is he planning on the terrorists dying of old age? Does no one at Balloon Juice wonder what’s going on there?
There are discussions about what some idiot on Fox or in the Republican Party says. But that’s not heavy intellectual lifting.
Why is everyone here so afraid?
chopper
@Bob In Portland:
I’m surprised you’re able to discuss anything at all with putin’s choad bouncing around your mouth. You must have experience as a ventriloquist.
Bob In Portland
@Cassidy: I guess that would qualify as another ad hominem. Another person afraid to venture an answer.
I know people get uncomfortable when what they thought was reality turns out to be somehow out of sync. Why, Cassidy, do you think that the government in Kiev can’t get their army of 30,000 to do its job?
I really do detect an intellectual cowardice here. The group-think that doesn’t allow you to drift from the reservation. Is it that none of you think that bad foreign policy can happen when there’s a Democrat in the White House?
Cassidy, explain yourself.
Cassidy
@Bob In Portland: Yup, everyone’s afraid to talk about Ukraine. /eye roll
Run along now.
chopper
seriously, nothing screams ‘internet hack’ like someone who continuously uses ‘ad hominem’ as a noun.
Howard Beale IV
@Bob In Portland: As is the case in all conflicts, it’s follow the money.
Now, tell me-where is it in this conflict?
Cassidy
@Bob In Portland: I honestly don’t give a shit. The only discomfort I’m feeling is the strained muscle in my back from moving.
Penus
So the renewed focus on Clinton and Monica Lewinsky has me wondering…in American politics, pre-Gary Hart, was there anything like today’s standard that philandering is a disqualifier for public office? I mean, side action for powerful men used to be a time-honored tradition here, and still is in other countries.
So my question is…why the change? Manifestation of the Republicans’ alliance with the Christian right? Atwater/Rove-type strategy hatched purely to win the campaign in front of them? Byproduct of an increased number of TV/radio stations needing to fill hours with programming?
I mean, really, before the late 80s/early 90s, there was really nothing that would have prevented such a man from holding high office. In fact, I’d guess a significant majority of those men were taking advantage of that privilege.
Frankensteinbeck
@Penus:
Whitewater and the impeachment were theater. An insult. Republicans being assholes. They couldn’t convict, they just wanted to embarrass President Clinton. Obama is faced with this kind of disrespect so constantly it’s hard to remember that it was weird then that they would be so obvious and petty. Socially, adultery has become less and less acceptable, but it’s usually only a problem for politicians when something else is involved, like a mysterious disappearance from office to hike the Appalachian Trail.
catclub
@different-church-lady: I just listened to the Basketball game. Either Wizards have discovered new levels of stink, or Indiana has relearned their defensive abilities. Given the sub 50% free throws by Wiz, I am thinking stink.
Bob In Portland
@Cassidy: Well, everyone here.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Actually, probably more than half the links I’ve provided have been to Russian-language material — none of which, for some odd reason, has appeared in RT.com or RIA/Novosti.
Now I’m just spitballing here, but maybe, just maybe, the reason some people here seem uninterested in engaging you on this topic is because you clearly seem uninterested in discussion, but rather just in lecturing.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Bob’s like a street preacher demanding to know why we won’t stop and talk to him about the Bible and why he’s totally right that Jesus is going to be here next Tuesday. Claiming that you want to have a conversation when your aim is to convert people is more than a little disingenuous.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Let’s not kid ourselves that there’s a segment of the oligarichs who want things to break their way-and another group of oligarchs who want to stop that from happening. The question becomes-which side do you back?
Bob In Portland
@Howard Beale IV: That’s actually a good question. What is the US’s interest in Ukraine? Why did we spend five billion on a coup? (I know, the 5B reference and I doubt we will ever get a full accounting from Langley.) After all, there are plenty of places in the world where millions of people can starve to death or be massacred without a tear from anyone in our State Department.
There will be money made by the IMF on their loans to the Kiev government, but I can’t imagine it’s worth all the saber-rattling and that money doesn’t accrue only to the US. Ukraine itself is pretty much an economic basket case and it will only get worse when there is some reckoning about the IMF restrictions on pensions, salaries and whathaveyou and when Russia finally demands payment for their gas. Ukraine has built up quite a tab. But Russia won’t gain anything from this exercise.
There are people who think that this is all merely Russian aggression because, you know, they want to bury us. Crimea was certainly seized, but without an understanding of the region’s history and the long-time connections with Russia it would appear to the typical man-in-the-street here in the US, who can’t even locate the Ukraine on a map, that it is simply Russian aggression. Russia knew that its arrangement with the former Ukraine government eventually wouldn’t be honored by the right-leaning government put into place by the coup, and Russia does need that port. The events in Kiev were both a threat and an opportunity to Russia regarding Crimea.
So it seems to me that Ukraine is part of an anti-Russian strategy. Who makes money on that? Well, all the usual suspects always make money on war. Or the Cold War 2.0, since any war directly against Russia can get nuclear very fast. Russia’s business is to supply petroleum products to Europe, and to China. The whole thing about the US supplying our fracked gas to Europe in place of Russia’s is pretty much a pipe dream. In fact, even if Russia loses the European market it’s unlikely to happen overnight without creating a worldwide depression until Europe rearranges its energy flow. Now I don’t think most in Europe particularly wants to risk their economies just for whatever the US is up to. China will have no problem buying up Russian gas.
So the problem here is that Russia is in a pretty good position as an energy broker. What country has gotten into war after war over the last fifty years, most of them near if not directly underneath an oil derrick?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Actually, I’d compare myself to that guy at the end of “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.”
Violet
@Penus: Grover Cleveland had a sex scandal and illegitimate child. The campaign chants were “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?” So it goes back to the late 19th century at least.
A Humble Lurker
@Bob In Portland: Of course you would. You and Putin.
Howard Beale IV
@Bob In Portland: If you think the US was actually going to drop $5B on Ukraine I got a bridge in Arizona for you.
Bob In Portland
@A Humble Lurker: Good reason to be humble.
Bob In Portland
@Howard Beale IV: Nuland, in December, threw out that figure for bringing the American Way to Ukraine, though the figure was supposed to be covering from 1991 to the present. But, as I explained before, the US has been in a relationship with Ukrainian fascists since the end of WWII. And if the US spent five billion just to show Ukraine the wonder of America’s Way aboveboard, then how much has the US Army/CIA spent there over seventy years?
Google Nuland and five billion.
Howard Beale IV
@Bob In Portland: Ah, yes Ms. “Fuck the EU”. That worked out real well, didn’t it?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
The only non-insane reference I can find to Nuland is from Christiane Amanpour’s blog, and you seem to be leaving out a few tiny details of Nuland’s quote, like this one:
Just out of curiosity, Bob, can you complete this common phrase from the early 1990s? It’s “breakaway ______ _______ (two words).” Any clue what that might be? Any idea what happened in Ukraine in 1991 that would have caused the US to add them to the foreign aid list?
Mnemosyne
Also an interesting poll from Pew — apparently those eastern Ukrainians who are supposedly dying to rejoin Russia aren’t really that fond of Russia. But I bet that’s just more Western propaganda, amirite, Bob?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: What happened in 1945 to get the US Army to employ the Ukrainian fascists? And, you know, the rest of that stuff over the last seventy years?
Why would you bother to show that quote like it somehow goes to America’s character? That’s boilerplate bull that’s delivered a dozen times a week in Washington.
Are you saying that the five billion was spent to further break up Russia? Or because we’re just good guys and hand out money to former Soviet Republics.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: First off, I have no idea how that poll was taken, what language or languages it was taken in. What specific phrases were used.
However, I’ve written a number of times that most of the people in eastern Ukraine want their rights protected. It’s only a quarter, at best, who want to reunite with Russia. You may have been misled by Western press which keeps on calling the people in the east “pro-Russian”. If you’ve got a problem with that term you should talk with the NY Times et al. You might want to call them ethnic Russian, or Russian-speaking, or federalists, or anti-fascists. All terms are more appropriate than “pro-Russian”.
So now that we are having a civil conversation, how come it’s taken the Ukrainian army a month to burn down one police station?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t read Ukrainian or Russian, so I’m at a disadvantage there. You do. You never have told me how you came about learning Ukrainian. You have Ukrainian parents who spoke Ukrainian in the home or who sent you to Ukrainian language school? It’s interesting that as strongly as you support the new Ukrainian regime you have assiduously avoided how you learned Ukrainian. Hell, this is the internet, just lie, but make it a good story.
Morzer
@Bob In Portland:
So you can’t read either of the key languages in this situation – and yet here you are setting yourself up as some sort of expert. That’s incredibly impressive as pathetic delusions go.
Now, what’s your latest fantasy football take on the CIA undead Nazi zombie horde?
Amuse me.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Yes, it’s almost like there was some kind of opposing political philosophy that Russia was being run under. Perhaps a different form of government? I bet you can remember what it was if you think really, really hard.
Hint: it came around about the same time as fascism, but is not actually the same thing.
Er, no, it goes to an ongoing conflict that was between the US and Russia for several decades. What was that thing called again? It was a conflict that was freezing, or chilly, something like that. Seemed to be kind of a big deal.
But, of course, whatever that conflict was wasn’t nearly as influential on current US or Russian politics than post-WWII fascism in the Ukraine, right?
Yes, Bob, it’s true: the US handed money out to the former Soviet Republics (you got two out of the three words in the phrase, but didn’t put them together correctly). One of them was Ukraine. And, yes, there’s a slight difference between The US has sent a total of $5 billion in aid to Ukraine in the past 23 years and The US sent $5 billion to Maidan last year, which is what you’ve been claiming Nuland meant.
And it’s kind of funny that you’re skeptical of my survey, but credulously reported that people in Ukraine prefer to speak Russian because a survey said so!
Bob In Portland
@Morzer: I’m not an expert, never claimed to be, but I look at sources beyond what gets put out in our mainstream media. If that sounds like bragging you can rectify the problem, your problem, quite easily. Read more varied sources and different perspectives. There’s lots of things out there written in English.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
It’s also worth remembering that the Soviet Union worked very hard, in what some might call a kinda fascist way, to impose Russian culture and settlers on the various components of its empire (ironically, at a time when said empire was being run mostly by a group of Georgians!). You’d expect to find quite a few ethnic Russians who have possibly never learned Ukrainian in the Ukraine (just as you find ethnic Russian in say, Latvia, who have never learned Latvian etc etc) – and that they would prefer, oddly enough, to speak the language they know and which they spoke with their family and friends. Bottom line, you can probably prove almost anything you like with a survey in the Ukraine right now. You just have to pick the right people and ask the right questions. Ask one group of people and you’ll discover that Putin is a lovely human being who is setting them free; ask another group and Putin is a slavering monster who eats Ukrainian children and wants to slaughter everyone except the Russian mafia. And so it goes.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Funny, that’s what climate change deniers say they’re doing. And evolution deniers. Teach the controversy, Bob!
Villago Delenda Est
And Gospodin Romanov once again hijacks a perfectly good thread for bashing Rethugs with his incessant propagandizing for the New Russian Imperium.
Morzer
@Bob In Portland:
True, laughable.
But you have no coherent basis for evaluating those sources, which is why your ranting and pretending to be the One True Sage in this situation is preposterous.
Deluded self-importance would be more accurate.
If not taking a conspiracy theorist with his head up his ass seriously is a “problem”, it’s a problem I prefer to have.
I can and do read sources in, among other foreign languages, French, German, Russian and Chinese on this issue. This is rather more than you can manage, so you might want to try for a bit more realism and humility here.
In English, we use plural forms of the copula with plural subjects.
Morzer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Think of annihilating his nonsense as being like practicing your golf swing for when the GOP kookoklelptocrats come around again.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: As I’ve said, the five billion was Nuland’s accounting, I presume she meant the State Department, but whatever she included she doesn’t, can’t tell us how much the CIA spent on Ukraine. Or any other government conduits, or front groups, etc. We know that the State Department has been recruiting reactionaries from former republics under NED in order to build alternative leadership in those countries. Who knows how many acronyms move money for our government?
Yes, in 1945 the Nazis in Germany were defeated. Then the US took over General Reinhard Gehlen’s Org in order to wage a war against the Soviet Union. Are we on the same page? We know about the Treaty of Fort Hunt, right? We know about the OUN/B. And we both agree that even though Bandera and the bunch were stone fascists who killed Poles and Jews and Russians for Adolf Hitler’s genocidal program that the US took these people under their wings precisely because they were anti-Communist.
We in agreement so far? We also agree that the CIA supported a guerrilla war by the OUN in Ukraine against the Soviet Union into the early fifties, right? We agree so far? We also agree that Radio Free Europe broadcast to Ukraine and that it used Ukrainian fascists for their propaganda into Ukraine, right? We also agree that in the fifties the CIA used the Congress For Freedom as a means to import fascists from Europe into the United States. Right? We know that many former fascists from Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine, were part of George Bush I’s Republican Ethnic Heritage group when he ran in 1988, right? As mentioned above we are already in agreement that Gehlen’s Org, which included plenty of those Ukrainian war criminals, was absorbed into the CIA at its birth. Right?
Radio Free Europe was a CIA operation. The CIA lied about it being connected to RFE for years (so as not to admit it was a propaganda outlet for the agency). Ditto with CFF. When Ronald Reagan was a spokesman for the Congress For Freedom his check was essentially cut by the CIA. We’re in agreement, right?
So we know that the CIA has had a 70-year relationship with the fascists in Ukraine, we know that there are fascist parties that are direct political descendants of the OUN/B, which the CIA supported in a guerrilla war into the fifties. And we agree that the fascists have four ministers in the current coup government, right? And that includes Parubiy who is waging the war against the east and who has been recruiting street toughs from the Nazi gangs into those new national guard units. So far we’re all in agreement?
So up until 1991 the US financed the fascists, hired some of the most despicable ones, imported fascists into the US. That was because of communism. Then after 1991 we started sending aid to the former Soviet Republics because we just were damned nice guys and democracy and all. Right? But it wasn’t about communism then, was it?
And fascists just happened to come out on the team that won the coup.
When did the CIA become disinterested in Ukraine and the politics there? Before or after the “Orange Revolution”? Not until the coup pushed out Yanukovich? Only when the CIA Director secretly flew into Kiev to shoot the shit with the folks there?
To me it would seem awfully naive after all of the above that the US didn’t have their fingers in Kiev and Maidan.
So is the US getting involved in Ukraine now? Not Communism, so why the new Cold War? Justice?
I’d go back to Howard Beale’s “follow the money.” We know that there’s oil in Iraq and in Iran and we know that Afghanistan is next to the world’s biggest (or second-biggest) pool of petroleum in the world.
Is the US going nose-to-nose with Russia because of the oil?
Okay. Fine. The US is using a coup and fascists (for which they may or may not have any responsibility) in order somehow attack (not directly, but by other means) or weaken Russia for the oil. Can we agree on that?
At least it wouldn’t be a deviation from our post-WWII foreign policy.
rikyrah
@ranchandsyrup:
Read your wife’s post on motherhood, and it made me LMBAO.
Bob In Portland
@Morzer: Morzer, I’m sorry if I offended you. I didn’t realize you were such a delicate flower.
You say that I have no “coherent basis for evaluating those sources”. How do you evaluate sources? How did you evaluate the New York Times and Judith Miller’s yellow cake and weapons of mass destruction at the time? Did you say to yourself, “Hmm, New York Times, I can trust them.” One of Miller’s co-writers for those columns lying us into the Iraq invasion is one of the Times’ current reporters on Ukraine. Do you think that he’s gotten more truthful over the years?
That’s why I asked tonight how come the 30,000 troops in Ukraine haven’t done more than kill a few civilians and burn a police station a month into this “campaign against terrorists” in eastern Ukraine. There’s a disconnect there.
What’s up with the Ukrainian army? Aren’t there any reporters from the NY Times or some western media outlet (send the guys from VICE) who might find out why the army isn’t doing anything?
Eventually when the government is lying to you you get that icky feeling that perhaps the pieces don’t fit. You feeling icky yet?
So I wonder what people here think about how come the army can’t take back a few town halls and police stations. Is that a reflection of the relationship between the military and the coup government? Someone, I think Mnem, was saying that most of the eastern Ukraine doesn’t want to join the Russians. Of course, they don’t. So they’re not pro-Russian. If it’s a tiny minority that wants to secede from Ukraine into Russia, then it’s even more peculiar that an army of 30,000 can’t, or won’t take those city halls. Are you being told what the people in the east really want? Are you being told why the Ukrainian army won’t attack?
I don’t know when or if you bailed on the concept of Afghanistan as a place to invade, but didn’t you wonder after bin Laden was known to have gone over the border to Pakistan why we didn’t get out for 12 years and counting? Maybe three or four years after bin Laden was gone did you think, “Well, maybe Osame will come back”? Or did you think that maybe we stayed there to destroy the opium crop, or to protect the rights of women? Which excuse did you switch to? Or, Taliban are bad people.
Anyway, I’ll be curious as to when you start seeing that the pieces don’t fit. Let us know.
Morzer
@Bob In Portland:
Dear Bibble in Pooterland, when you can’t even read the Russian and Ukrainian sources, you obviously have no basis for evaluating them. Is this too difficult a concept for your fevered mind to grasp?
As for “the pieces not fitting” – in what universe do you think your ridiculous understanding fits together the events of today (to the very limited degree that you are aware of them) with conspiracies that you are inventing out of your paranoia and a variety of not obviously related events?
Here’s a hint: when a community thinks of you as the punchline to a joke, you might just possibly want to ask yourself why.
Joseph Nobles
Lord Jesus, that’s my representative. I have got to move out of this fucking state.
Robert Waldmann
Cast of Characters. Mob of Republicans including John Boehner (played by John Clease), Barack Obama with a fake nose, Sire Bedever.
JB: I aimed to be a statesman not a lying partisan hypocritical scumbag. He turned me into Newt.
SB: [Looks puzzled]
JB: Well I got better.
SB: Better in what way exactly ?
different-church-lady
@Morzer:
He’s not really here for the hunting, is he?
ranchandsyrup
@rikyrah: thx rikyrah. :)
Another Holocene Human
@SiubhanDuinne: This better not be an internet rumor. I love Larry Wilmore!
Another Holocene Human
@Ian: Smith College. Not that it’s a secret.
Another Holocene Human
@Penus:
It wasn’t being reported by “serious” news outlets. Bush I was having an affair with a senior staff member (okay that sounds wrong) but there was no reporting on that until years later, after the Monica stuff broke. The GOP toddlers, high on “contract with America” broke that barrier. That’s why Larry Flynt turned around and exposed a bunch of the chief agents of the Republican Inquisition as philanderers themselves.
An affair, if exposed, was always kryptonite in some regions of the country and dismissed in others. But as a national thing, yeah, thank the GOP and the internet. Drudge was reporting all of the details, and everyone was reading Drudge, so the mainstream media followed suit to try to keep those eyeballs. A lot of lurid stuff turned up in the tabloids and people were buying them, so that was another factor. Now the media is much weaker. They feel like they have to jump on a story like this or get left behind.
Bob In Portland
@Morzer: Morzer, the community doesn’t like me for talking about Ukraine so I should shut up? That’s what you’re saying? It seems “conformist” fits you to a T.
J R in WV
@Bob In Portland:
We don’t like you because you speculate about things you know little about, acting as if you have secret information about affairs halfway around the world. I’m more concerned about American troops than I am about Ukrainian OR Russian revolutionaries or formal troops
It’s a shame that our $5B didn’t get more police stations burned down, the Republicans should look into it.
The elections in eastern Europe and middle Asia are a joke. Hell, many elections here are jokes, with people standing in lines for a whole day to get to a machine that isn’t going to register their votes correctly anyway. As in Ohio, 2004. As in the imaculate selection in 2000.
Given that the world’s financial structure is teetering on the verge of collapse, again, with the same thieves in charge of the levers of power, I think we have a hell of a lot more important things to worry about than frankly unimportant political machinations in the Stans.
Also, you don’t come here for conversation, you come here to rant at innocent people with better things to do than listen to a poorly educated lunatic. So go away, learn how to behave, don’t come back until you get some manners. There are threads about the Ukrainian situation, talk about it there, or in open threads, not in threads about our own political catsasstrophes!!
Djumass. Is that a Ukrainian word?