What Have We Learned Today?

Yes, I'm going to keep doing this. Deal with it. Here's today's rundown.

Now Hear This: Eminem Returns and "Call of Duty: Ghosts" Lands/11.5.13

"The Empire Strikes Thomas Kinkade" Is the Best Thing You'll See All Day/11.5.13

Exclusive: Rand Paul Responds To Accusations of Plagiarism/11.5.13

Quote of the Day" Kanye West Owns the Confederate Flag/11.5.13

Endless Drone

Today's Daily Banter column cuts to the chase on the subject of Glenn Greenwald, David Sirota, Rand Paul, and, of course, drones.

Here's the opening shot:

"This has been alluded to a couple of times here over the past two days, mostly by the always thoughtful and analytical Bob Cesca, but as usual I’ll be the one to dispense with all the pleasantries and just come right out and say it: Fuck Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota. Fuck them because their opinions don’t deserve to be taken the least bit seriously. Their supposedly bottomless reservoir of intellectual honesty is really puddle-deep and, in fact, they’re nothing more than what their fiercest critics have always accused them of being: sanctimonious jokes who pretend to be dedicated, indignant fighters of all manner of civil liberties injustices when in reality they’ve bequeathed to themselves wide latitude to choose which sins to prosecute and which to forgive or overlook completely. They don’t care about all affronts by authority to your civil rights. They only care about the select few they’ve chosen to plant their flag in and dig deep on and if their slavish devotion to those signature issues happens to force them into a position of defending a set of civil rights offenses they care less about but which are in the grand scheme no less awful, then so be it."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"If some people on this committee want to call this tragedy the worst since 9/11, it misunderstands the nature of 4,000-plus Americans lost in the War in Iraq under false pretenses."

-- Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut moments after Rand Paul told Hillary Clinton, during her Capitol Hill testimony on Benghazi, that were he president he would've fired her for her "culpability" in the "worst tragedy since 9/11"

There are a lot of great quotes coming out of Clinton's testimony today, most coming from Clinton herself being that she's not the type to suffer fools lightly and Lord knows most of those trying to milk this bullshit for political gain are fools of the highest order. But Murphy's is the most pointed for cutting right to the core of what this nonsense is really all about.

Benghazi isn't the worst tragedy since 9/11. It's barely even the worst tragedy since the last eleven deadly attacks on one of our embassies in the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa in the past decade. Not to dismiss the deaths of four people, including a U.S. ambassador, but there's something that needs to be said over and over again as the Republicans continue this ridiculous farce in search of a legitimate scandal: While absolutely tragic, what happened in Benghazi is a relatively by-the-numbers incident. The United States has made the choice to attempt to undertake diplomacy in some very, very dangerous places, and violence against the dedicated men and women stationed in those areas is, as callous as this sounds, the cost of doing business.

Every single question that can be asked about Benghazi should be asked in an effort to determine what happened and to help ensure that it doesn't happen again. But to forcefully suggest that the Benghazi attack and its aftermath were the result of institutional incompetence or that there's some kind of cover-up afoot at the highest levels of government is nothing more than the nihilistic politics of a desperate opposition party.

If a Republican had been in the White House when Benghazi happened -- and this attack and the immediate administration response to it would've been largely the same regardless -- none of this would be going on right now. Fox News would be shouting down anyone who dared to ask questions and calling that person a traitor guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war.

Guys like Rand Paul didn't deserve to be taken the least bit seriously going into this dumb-ass dog and pony show on the Hill today, and they're only making themselves look more ridiculous as the day goes by.

Adding: A bonus Quote of the Day from Joan Walsh over at Salon:

"The stature gap between Clinton and those possible 2016 rivals – OK, nobody’s announced they’re running, but I couldn’t help thinking about it – was enormous. When Rand Paul huffed 'had I been President at the time and I found that you did not read the cables (from Benghazi) I would have relieved you of your duties,' it wasn’t intimidating but funny. President Rand Paul? Try to say that without laughing."

Quote of the Day

"Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional."

-- Talking Monkey Rand Paul

Of all the statements being made in connection with today's historic Supreme Court ruling on the ACA, this for me is the reaction that's the most salient -- because it so perfectly sums up the right-wing mindset and illustrates where their blind outrage comes from and how it will continue to manifest itself. It's all there: the complete ignorance as to how our government works; the arrogant belief that any reality that challenges conservative demands, be it a decision by the voters or the highest court in the land, can be casually dismissed as illegitimate; the unwavering obstinacy and vow to fight on no matter how many times they're told that they can't have it their way.

This battle isn't over for them. It'll never be. Not until they're satisfied on this issue and every other one and until they're given back complete control of our government. This is simply the way the Republicans are these days. Give them what they want and no one gets hurt. A complete refusal to accept any way other than their own -- anyone other than themselves -- as valid and legal.

I'd say that it's like dealing with hijackers or hostage-takers -- but it's really more like dealing with children.

Bonus Dickhead Quote of the Day

"I don't think it's that big of a deal. I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you."

-- Tim Profitt, the Rand Paul campaign volunteer who stomped a female protester at a Senate debate in Kentucky Monday, speaking to WKYT radio

The level of shamelessness is just fucking staggering.

How entertaining would it be for a group of self-proclaimed biker dykes to pull an Omegas on this asshole and have Babs invite him to a tiny motel in the middle of nowhere so they can beat the living shit out of him the second he walks through the door?

(via Cesca)

(Update: In the interest of fairness, Mediaite, via the always entertaining Redstate.com, has posted new video of the incident which doesn't by any means change or excuse what happened to Lauren Valle, but it does show that she ill-advisedly took a run at the open window of Rand Paul's motorcade as it arrived. I'm willing to concede that a person with short hair, wearing an obvious wig, trying to get at a somewhat controversial political candidate during this insanely charged election season would draw an immediate and potentially harsh reaction from both that candidate's security detail and his supporters. Once again, this doesn't even begin to justify a bunch of assholes stomping on the head of a woman who's been wrestled to the ground, nor does it excuse Profitt's reprehensibly shameless line about how he's the one who's owed an apology, certainly not now that he knows full well what he did in the heat of the moment, but it's worth making sure that every aspect of this story is out there so that no one can claim a cover-up.)

The Beating Generation

For those who haven't yet seen this video of Rand Paul supporters attacking a protester in Kentucky last night, it's as reprehensible as it gets -- and it provides a perfect little snapshot of just how angry, psychotic and far past the boiling point the tea bagger crowd has grown as the final days days before the election dwindle down.

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Moveon.org -- but a bunch of guys stomping on the head of a woman?

You're fucking kidding me, right?

Caption This Shit!

Quote of the Day

"And that's why the best rap on libertarians isn't that they're racist, or selfish. (Though some of them are those things, and their beliefs encourage both bad behaviors, even if accidentally.) It's that they're thoroughly out of touch with reality. It's a worldview that prospers only so long as nobody tries it, and is too unreflective and self-absorbed to realize this. In other words, it's bratty. And that's bad enough."

-- Gabriel Winant in Salon

Man, Rand Paul is just the gift that keeps on giving these days. Of course it's tough to feel too sorry for a guy who just said that beating up on poor, put-upon BP is "un-American" because, well, "accidents happen" -- and that's probably the least idiotic thing that came out of his mouth this week.

Atlas Drubbed

I have to apologize that I'm still only at about maybe 35% around here these days -- meaning that I just don't have the time to put up a lot of content, to say nothing of the functioning brain cells necessary to make any of the content I do put up worth a damn.

Thankfully, for the time being anyway, I can allow guys like Cesca to speak for me. His new HuffPo column -- which not only tears libertarianism's freshly minted ambassador, Rand Paul, a new asshole, but also points out the ridiculous folly of libertarianism in practice -- is the kind of thing I would've written if I had anything approaching free time right now.

It takes balls of fucking titanium to offer public paeans to the notion of an absolutely unrestricted free market these days, after the abuses of power we've witnessed over the past several years -- the ones that essentially ran a train on the poor suckers dumb enough to put their their trust in the American dream and their money in banks that were always betting on them to lose. But I'll give old Rand this: He's a True Believer, almost religious in fervor, in the idea that only laissez-faire capitalist Darwinism will save us.

And as such, he proves with almost no outside effort just how impractical, stupid and outright dangerous genuine libertarian ideology can be.

The Huffington Post: Rand Paul's Underscores the Tea Party's Connection To Race/5.20.10

Bonus Quote of the Day

“I have a message. A message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We have come to take our government back.”

-- Rand Paul, political neophyte and son of Ron Paul, crescendoing his victory speech after winning yesterday's Kentucky primary

First, Paul's win should shock absolutely no one; if ever there was a place where unfocused and largely incoherent white resentment grows up out of the ground like weeds right now, it's Kentucky. The important thing to keep in mind here is this: He won the Republican Senate primary because he's a Republican -- and for some strange reason, I suppose in an effort to be taken more seriously and to deflect accusations of racism, the tea baggers often like to pretend that they eschew political affiliation, which is horseshit. The reality has always been that the "Tea Party" is nothing more than the militant wing of the GOP -- it's what Hamas is to the PLO (minus all the acts of terrorism -- for now). The tea baggers feel like the Republican party just isn't crazy and scary enough on its own these days, so they're pulling a Vince McMahon and creating an XFL to "compete."

Second, I don't want to hear one more supposedly high-minded asshole trying to convince me or anyone else that Ron Paul is someone who should be taken seriously -- at least as far as his ideas are concerned. Anyone who names his child after Ayn Rand -- and does it ostensibly as an adult and not some pissy, arrogant teenager who stalks the halls of his high school trying to convince himself that the world is beneath him and he's secretly more evolved than the kids who are regularly flushing his pack of cloves down the toilet and stuffing him into lockers -- doesn't deserve even an ounce of credibility.

Finally, how chilling is it getting to hear this "take our government back" crap?