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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Politicans / Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees

Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees

Repub Senility Open Thread: Lindsey Graham Wants It to Be 1983 Again

by Anne Laurie|  May 26, 20196:01 pm| 166 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Military, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Russiagate

And he’s not afraid to sacrifice other Americans’ lives in order to live out his days-of-political-glory fantasy:

I repeat myself: the entire enemy force in Grenada was less than 2,000 total lightly armed Grenadan and Cuban soldiers. The war still killed and wounded as many Americans as Mogadishu.

Venezuela would easily muster at least 250,000 troops. Well-equipped, with favorable terrain. https://t.co/Z7kpKA6Psj

— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) May 26, 2019

I get that these guys are always horny for wars they'll never have to fight in.

But imagine any boomer being horny for a JUNGLE war. Did any lessons of your time get through that thick generational ego?

— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) May 26, 2019

According to Wikipedia, Graham is just a few months older than I am. So he didn’t actually have to avoid going to Vietnam, but he damn sure remembers what happened as that ‘intervention, for democracy’ wrapped up. But then, as long as you were a GOP politician, Grenada was just a splendid little military exercise!

The Guardian, on Saturday — “Pence hints at possible military intervention in Venezuela”:

… Vice-President Mike Pence has told the most diverse graduating class in the history of the US Military Academy the world is “a dangerous place” and they should expect to see combat.

“Some of you will join the fight against radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

He also said: “Some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere.”…

Ah yes, the glorious invasion of Grenada. A tiny, isolated island defended by a small militia of locals, diploma mill security guards and a handful of Cuban construction workers that nonetheless caused as many US dead and wounded as the Black Hawk Down incident. https://t.co/Akp1uef1VA

— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) May 23, 2019

Definitely comparable to a resource-rich nation of 30,000,000 with a large military, integrated armed militia and plenty of cities and canopy jungle (remember those? Oh no I guess Trump wouldn't) to camp out in.

— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) May 23, 2019

Unlike ‘Mike Dense’, Lindsey Graham is not a certified idiot. But it seems he’s been huffing Trump’s farts so intensely, he’s beginning to hallucinate, per McClatchy:

… In a Wall Street Journal op-ed posted online Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, favorably compared potential military action in Venezuela to the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, an operation that lasted about a week and led to the overthrow of the Caribbean nation’s military-run government.

“I think the military option has to be real, I think the ultimate solution is getting Cuba out,” Graham said in an interview with McClatchy. “If Cuba goes, Maduro goes and we have a history of standing up to Cuban intervention in the past and this is a defining moment for the Trump presidency in terms of how they deal with Cuba.”…

When asked about the scale of military force needed in Venezuela, Graham did not offer specifics but said the goal is “to restore order.”

“We’re not occupying Venezuela, but if Maduro refuses to go and the Cubans keep using their military apparatus to prop him up, it is in our national serucity interest to do in Venezuela what Reagan did in Grenada,” Graham said.

President Ronald Reagan sent about 6,000 troops to Grenada, an island nation about double the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of about 100,000 people. The weeklong operation in Grenada resulted in the deaths of 20 U.S. troops…

Also Lindsey Graham, earlier this morning:

On Fox, Lindsey Graham encourages Trump to defy House subpoenas. https://t.co/xip4OJhLBw pic.twitter.com/54dM8QTljH

— Will Saletan (@saletan) May 26, 2019

Yeah, it’s not just Graham’s skin that’s as transparent as window glass…

Repub Senility Open Thread: Lindsey Graham Wants It to Be 1983 AgainPost + Comments (166)

Bootless Speculation Open Thread: Why So Agitated, Sen. Graham?

by Anne Laurie|  February 1, 20198:10 pm| 138 Comments

This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Dolt 45, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!

“Today I wrote to the FBI about made-up ‘concerns’ because I want to change the subject away from *why* Stone was arrested, namely, for lying and concealing his efforts to COLLUDE with an intelligence arm of Russia in order to benefit the Trumo campaign.” https://t.co/wepdKKw1tP

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 31, 2019

Looking forward to debate on Sen. Graham's SB 24, the Excuse Me Did You Not Notice That He's White Act of 2019https://t.co/7yXuExQzlE

— AccomplishedTheHat (@Popehat) February 1, 2019

not many people remember Gyrocopter Guy at this point but Lindsey Graham was super angry that Capitol police didn't open fire on him in a crowded tourist area pic.twitter.com/V0uLHWWRxM

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) January 31, 2019

ME: Lindsey Graham isn't being blackmailed he's just an attention-starved warmonger who knows Trump is an easy mark…

*Graham stans for America's #1 ratfucker*

ME: …huh…well you know, I HAVE occasionally been wrong before. https://t.co/wcaTucKc5C

— Zeddy (@Zeddary) January 31, 2019

Digby, at Salon, has a milder interpretation:

… Graham thinks he’s able to manipulate Trump into doing his bidding. Indeed, according to a friend who knew Graham’s thinking, he literally made that cynical calculation… Someone who has the president’s ear is in a powerful position, and today Graham is closer to Trump than any other senator.

Graham has betrayed his alleged principles and maverick reputation across the board, even as he makes half-hearted efforts to present himself to the press as an independent thinker who breaks with the president when he disagrees with him. He often falls back on his traditional conservative hawk credentials on foreign policy, coming before the cameras and sighing deeply when Trump makes one of his impulsive, ill-informed national security decisions which the GOP establishment perceives as a bridge too far. Graham will say he thinks it’s a mistake and promises to talk to the president about it. Once in a while he’ll feel compelled to weakly criticize Trump’s crude behavior or blatant racism.

… Graham is walking a fine line and has to go beyond flattery to stay in the president’s good graces. It appears he’s discovered the best way to do that is to become a vicious, conspiracy-mongering attack dog. Trump will forgive almost anything if someone goes after his enemies with the same fervor he does…

Yeah, Graham has always seemed to be most comfortable as the Man Behind the Man on the Podium — remember his long partnership with ‘Maverick’ McCain — but his antics over the last year or so have become increasingly unglued.

Perhaps he’s just another indicator that the hardcore Suthrun Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery throwbacks feel like they’re (at long last!) losing the argument?

Bootless Speculation Open Thread: Why So <em>Agitated</em>, Sen. Graham?Post + Comments (138)

Whaaaaaatttttt….

by David Anderson|  September 21, 20173:14 pm| 130 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Grifters Gonna Grift, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Open Threads

Admission of just how bad the bill will be for the rest of the country. https://t.co/HZF5fpZwMs And this STILL screws Alaska long-term. pic.twitter.com/8YpRKtn3Z2

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) September 21, 2017

If you want to know how great the Graham-Cassidy bill is for states, the bribe for Alaska is that THEY GET TO KEEP OBAMACARE!!

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) September 21, 2017

So, this isn't just "let Alaska keep Obamacare." It's "let Alaska keep Obamacare, and then some."

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) September 21, 2017

Open thread

Whaaaaaatttttt….Post + Comments (130)

Reinforce good behavior

by David Anderson|  September 18, 20175:11 pm| 72 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Did You Know John McCain Was A POW?, Not Normal

For those who live in Arizona — encourage good behavior

McCAIN on Graham-Cassidy: "I am not supportive of the bill yet."

He emphasizes he wants regular order, says CBO non-score affects his view.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 18, 2017

And if need be, drink after you thank the very nice intern for working for such a Mavericky Maverick.

Reinforce good behaviorPost + Comments (72)

True-Life Tales of Terror

by Betty Cracker|  October 31, 20158:24 am| 132 Comments

This post is in: Because of wow., Domestic Politics, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Midnight Confessions, Sweet Fancy Moses!, WTF?

Jezebel has their top 10 reader horror stories up here. Meh. I think we can do better, Juicers. Anyone got any true-life tales of terror to tell this Halloween? I’ll start us off, even though mine isn’t really all that scary. I’ve alluded to it briefly before, but here it is in detail:

My maternal grandmother is from the Carolinas. She was a schoolteacher when my sister and I were growing up, so she had summers off, and she’d take us on road trips to go camping, see historical sites (she was a history teacher) and visit relatives.

One of her cousins had inherited the old family manse, which was built in the 1820s (I think):

haunted house

Everyone assumed Cousin Howard was gay because he never married or had a girlfriend that anyone ever heard about, and he was a natty dresser with a flair for decorating. Back then, people made those kinds of assumptions.

(Now that I think back on it, Cousin Howard’s speech and mannerisms were somewhat reminiscent of Senator Lindsey Graham’s, another confirmed bachelor from the Carolinas. So maybe things haven’t changed so much after all, as far as assumptions go.)

show full post on front page

Anyhoo, even though we lived 500 miles away, the old family house figured prominently in our lives since Grandma and Cousin Howard were close. He was an uncle figure to my mom and her siblings as well as to the kids of my generation, and we visited back and forth.

Cousin Howard had lovingly restored the old house and decorated it in antebellum style. The beds all had high, carved wooden headboards, and the rooms featured heavy, imposing furniture. We’d grown up hearing stories about this house being haunted, and it looked the part.

One of the ghost stories we’d heard over the years involved sightings of the translucent figure of a Civil War-era female relative, who was seen frantically rushing down an upstairs hallway and entering a bedroom to hide her jewelry from marauding Yankee soldiers, who were approaching via the river across the road from the house.

One summer, Cousin Howard was hosting a large family reunion, and Grandma, my sister and I went up a week early to help him prepare for the big shindig. My sister and I were around 11 and 12 years old at the time — prime age for getting freaked out by ghost stories.

We refused to sleep in separate rooms since we were scared shitless. In fact, I don’t think either of us went upstairs without the other the whole time we were there, day or night. It was a creaky old house, and we frequently heard what sounded like footsteps on the stairs and in the hallway.

One night when we couldn’t sleep but had nonetheless been banished upstairs, we sat on the big bed playing crazy eights. I had my back to the door, which opened out into the hallway, and my sister was facing me.

Along the wall to my left was a tall antique breakfront writing secretary with its swing-down desk surface closed. I’d used it earlier to draw and write letters and had shut it, even though it was customarily left open, because I kept running into the corner of the desk.

My sister and I were engrossed in our card game when suddenly we heard what sounded like footsteps running up the stairs and toward us down the hall. We froze, looking at each other, terrified. I was too afraid to turn around, but I could see my sister looking past me toward the door and seeing something that scared her so much that she dove under the covers.

The hair on the back of my neck and arms was standing up, but I still would not turn around. I bowed my head and stared at the cards on the bed between myself and the trembling lump under the covers that was my sister and kept repeating to myself, “It’s not real! It’s not real! It’s not real!”

I heard the steps coming behind me, then the creaking noise of the desk surface on the secretary being lowered. Even though I didn’t want to see it and didn’t turn my head, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure at the secretary. I closed my eyes and screamed, which set my sister off, so we were both shrieking like banshees.

That brought Grandma and Cousin Howard upstairs at a rapid clip. We told them what happened — my sister’s account of the figure she had seen before she hid under the covers generally matched mine: an indistinct, misty figure in a floor-length dress with her hair in a bun on top of her head.

The secretary desk was closed, but Cousin Howard asked me if I saw what the figure did when she was at the secretary. I told him no — I’d only caught a glimpse of her before closing my eyes and screaming.

Then Cousin Howard opened the secretary and showed me that there were two compartments built into the structure of it and cunningly hidden — you could own the thing for a hundred years, use it daily and never know they were there. He said that’s where our Confederate ancestor had supposedly squirreled her jewels away.

So did we see a ghost? I don’t think so. We were a pair of kids hopped up on M&Ms and supernatural stories. I think it was a combination of a creaky house and the power of suggestion, honestly.

Many years later, Cousin Howard died, and he left the antique secretary from the old house to me. It stands not 15 feet away from where I sit writing this now. As far as I know, the ghost did not follow it. Perhaps she roams the hallways of the old house even now, looking for it.

Your turn!

True-Life Tales of TerrorPost + Comments (132)

Battle Flag Acquisition Strategies

by Betty Cracker|  June 23, 20156:41 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: Crazification Factor, Election 2008, Election 2010, Election 2012, Election 2014, Election 2016, Fables Of The Reconstruction, Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Nixonland, Organizing & Resistance, Politics, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, War, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Assholes, Decline and Fall, Fuck Yeah!, General Stupidity, Meth Laboratories of Democracy, Our Failed Political Establishment, Rare Sincerity, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All, Sociopaths, The Decadent Left In Its Enclaves On The Coasts, The Dirty F-ing Hippies Were Right

battle-flags_edited-1

Early this morning, I was doing some research on the endurance of corporate culture, studying how sometimes the spirit of a smaller, acquired firm can permeate the larger, acquiring organization. It’s not unusual for a big behemoth to acquire a scrappy smaller company solely for the purpose of infusing the moribund giant with fresh blood, and when the companies’ interests align, it can create an unstoppable marketplace force…for a while.

With that dynamic still on my mind, I moseyed over to Booman’s place and read a post that hit upon something that has been bothering me about the focus on the rebel flag in the wake of the domestic terrorist massacre in Charleston:

But the focus on the Confederate Flag can have an unfortunate side effect. What, after all, does that flag mean when it doesn’t simply mean white supremacy?

It’s meaning in those cases in nearly identical to the meaning of the modern conservative movement. It’s about disunion, and hostility to the federal government, and state’s rights. It’s anti-East Coast Establishment and anti-immigrant. It’s about an idealized and false past and preserving outworn and intolerant ideas. It’s about a perverse version of a highly provincial and particularized version of (predominantly) Protestant Christianity that has evolved to serve the interests of power elites in the South. It’s about an aggrieved sense of false persecution where white men are playing on the hardest difficulty setting rather than the easiest, and white Christians are as threatened as black Muslims and gays and Jews.

“Those blacks are raping our women and they have to go.”

That’s what the Confederate Flag is all about, but it’s also the basic message of Fox News and the whole Republican Party since the moment that Richard Nixon promised us law and order.

But it’s not black people who have to go.

It’s this whole Last Cause bullshit mentality that fuels our nation’s politics and lines the pockets of Ted Cruz just as surely as it has been lining the pockets of Walmart executives.

Today, maybe the governor down there had an epiphany. Maybe this massacre was the last straw. But, tomorrow, we’ll all be right back where we began with Congress acting like an occupying Confederate Army.

If we solve a symbolic problem and leave the rest untouched, then what will really change?

You can’t bury the Confederate Flag without, at the same time, burying the Conservative Movement.

Let’s get on with it.

He’s right. For many white people, the rebel flag represented moldy old myths about the antebellum South. But think about how nicely that mythology dovetailed with the lies about the pre-Civil Rights era that paleocons like Pat Buchanan tell themselves.

Like a moribund corporation, the GOP acquired Confederate culture with the Southern strategy, harnessing the racism in the South and its echo nationwide to build the present day Republican Party. That’s why Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That’s why an always-wrong, New York City-born legacy hire who is relentlessly eager to send other people’s kids off to die in glorious causes is tweeting nonsense that his ancestors would find…puzzling:

The Left’s 21st century agenda: expunging every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 23, 2015

So, the rebel flag should come down in South Carolina and every other state capitol in the former Confederacy, and with surprising (to me) swiftness, it looks like it will. That will be more than a symbolic victory; it will be the partial righting of a very old wrong.

But there’s a danger in “otherizing” the South in this context. It’s not wrong to condemn its blinkered myth-making and prideful backwardness, but there’s a hazard in moral preening within and outside of Dixie, a risk of declaring a tidy victory when the dinosaurs in the state capitols of the former Confederacy finally sink into the tarpit they’ve thrashed in for 150 years.

The risk is that we’ll lose focus on the modern day “Congress acting like an occupying Confederate Army,” as Booman put it. At its core, the Southern strategy was an attempt to roll back progress by hitching the anti-New Dealers’ star to the creaky old Confederate wagon. Its organizers weren’t all or even mostly slack-jawed yokels waving rebel flags. They included a fiery libertarian business man from Phoenix, a glib B-movie pitchman who hailed from Northern Illinois and a twitchy, paranoid Quaker from California.

To achieve true victory, we have to finally drive a stake through the heart of the Southern strategy, not just the Confederacy. So let’s make expunging the rebel flag from the public square the opening salvo in a larger battle to take our country back. Yes, that’s right, TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK. With no lies and decaying myths about what that means. The flag that represents it isn’t spotless. Its founding was rooted in slavery, genocide and the oppression of women. But unlike its dying counterpart, this flag is worth saving.

Battle Flag Acquisition StrategiesPost + Comments (107)

Afternoon Open Thread

by Zandar|  December 17, 20141:57 pm| 162 Comments

This post is in: Lindsey Graham's Fee Fees, Open Threads

As Betty pointed out below US normalization with Cuba is vastly overdue, and it turns out that Cuba deal has been in the works for 18 months and involved Canada and the Vatican as intermediaries.  And nobody had any idea.  No wonder Republicans are going completely apeshit.

I will do all in my power to block the use of funds to open an embassy in Cuba. Normalizing relations with Cuba is bad idea at a bad time.

— Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) December 17, 2014

HURT.  FEE-FEES.

Also, open threadness.

Afternoon Open ThreadPost + Comments (162)

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