Today's edition of quick hits:
* As far as far as some United Nations officials are concerned, Syria is now in the midst of a civil war.
* Speaking of Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia today of supplying attack helicopters to the Syrian government, which if true, she said "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."
* As Spain's long-term borrowing costs soar, investors have apparently concluded "that the rescue is potentially a much better deal for the banks and their shareholders than for the government, its taxpayers and bondholders."
* Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca M. Blank certainly isn't unfamiliar with filling the role of a temporary cabinet secretary.
* The Justice Department today formally filed its lawsuit against Florida over Gov. Rick Scott's (R) voter purge.
* For whatever reason, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) made a weird call for Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation today. The Senate Republican leadership did not join Cornyn on this, at least not yet.
* Ta-Nehisi Coates takes a closer look at Mark Regnerus' research on same-sex parenting.
* The hosts of "Fox & Friends" may not realize that 2007 was not "three years" ago.
* And a scheduling note: I'll be posting irregularly through Friday of this week. I'll be around, and hope to still do a Mendacity piece on Friday afternoon, but I'll be away from my desk tomorrow morning, and won't resume the usual schedule until Monday morning. Just FYI.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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Fox and Friends is hilarious, they had that other comedian Mitt Rmoney on today!
What I really want to know is who make better parents, straight porn actors or gay porn actors?
Quickie item for Steve Benen, famous collector of Romney lies:
-- Bishop Jean-Félix-Albert-Marie Vilnet. Called "Albert Marie" by the Romney gang. Described as a "drunk priest" who caused the 1968 accident that killed Mrs. Leola Seeley Anderson.
Romney has been a no-conscience liar for decades. Thinks it's a team sport. He enjoyed lying to everyone about this elderly priest in 2007.
Romney would be a disaster in the White House to make George Bush look like an Eisenhower or a Harry Truman.
Romney pledges to implement Obneycare-lite, but as usual can't reveal the full details of how it will be paid for.
So more hassle and confusion and more delay in actually fixing the system.
Why should anybody vote for this?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-12/romney-outlines-health-care-plan-as-supreme-court-weighs-law.html
On the same-sex parenting research*, here's a cartoon on the subject from ThinkProgress in case who might have missed it.
*Not intended to be a factual statement.
Sooo... Obama and Clinton now want to call what is happening in Syria a CIVIL war. What a joke. When war in Syria is funded, supplied, and supported by large outside powers like Russia, Iran, and the USA, it is a PROXY war. Calling it a civil war is just another lie intended to fool and mislead the public. That lie serves a neo-Con agenda. The unfinished Bush-Cheney agenda for the mid east was to implement regime change in EVERY Arab country in the region surrounding Israel. Obama is completing that unfinished agenda even though his base didn't vote for that. So... WHO is Obama taking orders from? It certainly isn't the base of the democratic party. Where is our "Syriana" correspondent?
How do you know, were you there? Were you standing in the middle of a street there interviewing people as they ran by screaming. Were you hiding in one of those bombed out buldings taking notes? Have you tried running towards the border only to find The Taliban? How do you know, are you a psychic? Or are you just trying to make sense of the tea leaves at the bottom of your cup?
I'm not psychic, I'm a cynic.
I'm done believing ANYTHING the US government says regarding ~"those bad people over there in the mid east, those tyrants and dictators who we must overthrow and remove from of power."
Look, after Iraq and the TRAINLOAD of lies and propaganda foisted on us with the intent to misinform and manipulate the public, I can't imagine why you believe a damn thing Obama says. This is the same government, doing the EXACT SAME thing to another country in the mid east that didn't attack us.
Remember all the lies about WMD. Remember the administration efforts to silence Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson, and weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Remember the propaganda attacks against France. Remember Freedom Fries. And faux war heroes? Remember the Jessica Lynch story. Remember Pat Tillman. And real heroes? Remember Bradley Manning and the video he revealed which was classified only because this government does not want the public to know the truth.
If the public knew the truth, this @!$%# would stop.
And for your information, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Let me quote Scott Ritter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter
In an October 19, 2005 interview with Seymour Hersh, Ritter claimed that regime change, rather than disarmament, has been the primary objective of President George H. W. Bush, and later of President Clinton and the second President Bush, (and now Obama) -in imposing and maintaining economic sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf War. Said Ritter:
"The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted.
Within months of this resolution being passed -and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution -within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, -publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained (Iraq) through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to the current disastrous course of action under the GW Bush Administration."
And now the Obama administration is doing the EXACT same thing to yet another Arab country in the mid east that didn't attack us. Syria -and the casualties related to socio-political unrest there -could have been predicted by anyone who pays attention.
Do you see a pattern here? I do. It's an unspoken policy to implement regime change -by hook or by crook -for EVERY Arab state in the region surrounding Israel.
Steve, hope you can get to your mendacity piece it is some of your most important work!!
When you return, let's reframe the Mendacity list to its opposite: statements of the truths instead of his lies. We need to say what this President has done, not what Mitt says he's done or not done. What do you think?
I do not understand why the msm and the UN are calling Syria a CIVIL WAR , we do not refer to what happened in Germany in 1930's and 40's as a civil war , the Syrian government started shooting people for carrying signs and asking for changes , they have had no choice but to arm themselves, or die , that is not a civil war , I am perplexed
So what's Obama going to do about Assad - while hundreds of women and children get murdered?
Obviously Obama is doing the same thing to Assad that he and GW Bush did to other mid east leaders like Muamar Gadhafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, president Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Do you see a pattern here?
And do you know why thousanda of people are not dying today in France? -Because western powers aren't trying to covertly overthrow the government of France. In fact, the last time thousands of people died in France was when Hitler overthrew the government of France. Without regard to any purported moral justification, Obama is doing the same thing in the mid east that Hitler was doing in Europe.
I can't find the answer anywhere and with Florida doing purges, I'll ask here:
Question about voter rolls: can they archive the list so that people aren't on there? I thought the NVRA prohibited the rolls from being changed with few exceptions (section 8, which didn't apply). They eventually wrote it in, but it still makes me wonder; SC is the state if that makes a difference.
With voter registration cards in hand, my husband and I went to vote yesterday. He was able to vote without incident. I wasn't on their list and it took them calling someone and eventually writing it in for me to vote. I've only moved once and it was in the same district. The committee person said they archive the list from time-to-time, but it just made me wonder if this was a) legal and b) a possible way to disenfranchise voters who are shut-in and cannot get out often due to disabilities.