“A spokesman for the Institute for Human Services, said people are stealing Spam because it’s easy to sell. ‘It’s quick cash for quick drug money,’ Carvalho said.”
There really is nothing more we could possibly add at this time; some circumstances should speak for themselves.
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Image note: Detail of file photo by Lucy Pemoni/AP Photo.
Associated Press. “Honolulu store owners say thieves are targeting cans of Spam”. 21 October 2017.
Over the years, one constant is that American conservatives have some of the best potential to actually, genuinely surprise me. In a way, this is predictable; if we suggest it is not simply the positions they hold―e.g., a diverse range of prioritized supremacism―but also the severity and desperation, it only makes sense that it would be conservatives offending me, as there are very few liberal advocates of white, Christian, male, heterosexual supremacism. That sort of thing.
But it happens in other ways, too. Imagine an accurate description of George W. Bush’s presidency, offered as a prognostication the night he was elected. And think of it this way, too―it’s not just the wars. Consider: Vice President Cheney will craft energy policy in secret meetings with people who wreck the energy industry, and then claim executive privilege to hide that record from public scrutiny until it is time to surrender those materials to the National Archives, whereupon he will claim to be part of the Legislative branch of government. Back then, it would have seemed a wild claim. Not that a vice president would hold secret policy meetings and try to hide the record, but to suggest Mr. Cheney would be so damnably stupid as to hide behind executive privilege and then claim to not be part of the executive branch―both claims regarding the same issue―would have seemed an insulting condemnation of his character and intellect alike.
Then again, by the time the Bush/Cheney administration was finished, nothing really seemed surprising, did it?
What about the Speakership of John Boehner?
When he took the gavel, would any of us have imagined this end? What would it have sounded like to predict the worst speakership in the history of the nation? What would people have said of purported clairvoyance spinning tales of such incredible incompetence? Here, try this one: No, we don’t want the President to use his executive authority on immigration; I have a bill. No, we can’t pass our bill; I guess the President will have to use his executive authority. No, the President should not have used his executive authority; we will find a way to sue him in order to stop him.α
How about Tuesday?
No, really, I made a joke. It wasn’t a good joke; it was an obvious joke about a House Republican Conference so fractious and intractable that the Speaker of the House could not actually manage to do anything useful. And it is a House Republican Conference so fractious and intractable that we now get to find out whether or not Speaker Boehner is capable of merely resigning properly.
Boehner said in a statement that he’ll continue to serve as speaker until the House selects someone to replace him. “We will announce the date for this election at a later date, and I’m confident we will elect a new Speaker in the coming weeks. Our conference will work together to ensure we have the strongest team possible as we continue to focus on the American people’s priorities,” said the Ohio lawmaker.
(Frumin)
This is really happening.
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α And we’re still waiting for the lawsuit, as I recall.
Frumin, Aliyah. “Kevin McCarthy abruptly drops House speaker bid, race postponed”. msnbc. 8 October 2015.
Let us start here:
Importantly, Davis is not claiming a substantial burden on her religious freedom or free speech rights if someone else authorizes and approves a SSM license devoid of her name.
(Mihet and Christman [Liberty Counsel], 28 August 2015; accents per source)
Follow the bouncing ball:
“The stay request offers several options such as removing Davis’s name from the marriage license, thus removing the personal nature of the authorization,” Staver pointed out. “Another accommodation would be to allow licenses to be issued by the chief executive of Rowan County or developing a statewide, online marriage license process,” Staver suggested. “There is absolutely no reason that this case has gone so far without reasonable people respecting and accommodating Kim Davis’s First Amendment rights,” Staver concluded.
(Liberty Counsel, 31 August 2015; boldface accent added)
And then came Friday:
Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel which represents Davis, said he believes Friday’s licenses are invalid because they were not issued with her approval. Davis’ name does not appear on the licenses.
“They are not worth the paper they are printed on,” Staver said, standing in front of the Grayson, Kentucky, detention center where Davis is being held. He added she had no intention of resigning as clerk.
(Bittenbender; boldface accent added)
Would any among Ms. Davis’ defenders care to attempt reconciling, or at least merely explaining that sleight? This much is true: We don’t expect Mr. Staver, nor his colleagues, Messrs. Christman and Himet, to do so. Indeed, we might wonder if they would find demands for such an explanation offensive to their religious freedom.
To be clear, because some need it so expressed:
• If Kim Davis’ name was not on the marriage licenses, then the “personal nature of the authorization” would be removed. (Liberty Counsel, 28-31 August)
• If the licenses were issued without Ms. Davis’ name on them, then they are “not worth the paper they are printed on” because Ms. Davis has not given authorization of a personal nature.
In the end, Mark Joseph Stern’s question of whether Kim Davis is “getting taken for a ride by her lawyers”, as the headline put it, asserts itself more insistently.
More and more, it’s beginning to look like the Liberty Counsel is taking Davis for a ride, using her doomed case to promote itself and its extremist principles. Davis has certainly humiliated and degraded the gay couples whom she turned away. But I wonder if, on some level, she isn’t a victim, too.
(Boldface accent added)
I mean, really.
This is a sick joke playing out before our eyes.
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Image note: Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk of Courts, listens to Robbie Blankenship and Jesse Cruz as they speak with her at the County Clerks Office on September 2, 2015 in Morehead, Kentucky. (Photo: Ty Wright/Getty Images)
(Tip o’ the hat I don’t actually wear: JoeMyGod)
Mihet, Horatio G. and Jonathan D. Christman. “Emergency Application to Stay Preliminary Injunction Pending Appeal”. Davis v. Miller et al. Supreme Court of the United States. 28 August 2015.
Liberty Counsel. “Accommodations Would End Rowan County Dispute”. Press Release. 31 August 2015.
Bittenbender, Steve. “Kentucky clerk’s office ends ban on same-sex marriage licenses”. Reuters. 4 September 2015.
Stern, Mark Joseph. “Is Kentucky’s Infamous Anti-Gay Clerk Getting Taken for a Ride by Her Lawyers?”. Slate. 31 August 2015.
The legislation may have lacked any real inspiration, but the silver lining is rather quite funny:
Legislation that would take the state of Alabama out of the business of issuing marriage licenses died in the House of Representatives committee today.
“This bill does not destroy marriage,” Rep. Greg Albritton, R- Bay Minette, said. “This bill does not denigrate marriage. This bill doesn’t desanctify marriage because the state cannot sanctify marriage” ....
.... Albritton said the bill would simply substitute the license for a marriage contract that would be filed in the probate office and would take away the requirement for a marriage ceremony.
It was an attempt to prevent chaos from ensuing if the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage this summer, he said.
“My goal is not to protect a group,” Albritton said. “My goal is to protect the state.”
(Edgemon)
Yes … protecting the state. From what, exactly?
This is the problem: When they said human rights for homosexuals threatened civilized society, we should have paid more attention in order to recognize what they meant: If homosexuals get human rights, conservatives will set about trying to destroy civilized society.
Prevent chaos from ensuing? But whence comes the chaos? This seems a little bit like preventing a bank robbery by giving the money to the thieves before they walk in.
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Image note: “Now why was that?” Mamimi searches for an answer, under the bridge in Mabase. (Detail of frames from FLCL episode 1, “Fooly Cooly”.)
Edgemon, Erin. “Legislation that would get Alabama out of the marriage license business dies”. AL.com. 3 June 2015.
Ah, Kentucky. To the one, it is true that I believed nobody could top the stupidity of Paul Clement, arguing for House Republicans in Hollingsworth that irresponsible procreation by heterosexuals was a good reason to ban gay marriage.
To the other, there is Kentucky.
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear says the state’s ban on gay marriage should be upheld in part because it is not discriminatory in that both gay and straight people are barred from marrying people of the same gender.
In an argument labeled absurd by gay marriage advocates, Beshear’s lawyer says in a brief filed last week at the U.S. Supreme Court that “men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex” under Kentucky law, making the law non-discriminatory.
The argument mirrors that offered by the state of Virginia nearly 50 years ago when it defended laws barring interracial marriage there and in 15 other states, including Kentucky, by saying they weren’t discriminatory because whites were barred from marrying blacks just as blacks were barred from marrying whites.
The Supreme Court in 1967 rejected that argument in the historic case of Loving v. Virginia, in which Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, were charged with a crime for marrying.
(Wolfson)
Right.
There are moments between people, and then there are moments between people.
And yet there are still other moments between people we would rather never imagine, except that we will imagine it, just not about anyone we know.
Why am I hearing a Robyn Hitchcock song in my head?
And why can’t it be a different song?
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Weiner, Zach. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. 22 February 2015.
Post-something?
The election of President Obama in 2008 was heralded by some as the beginning of a “post-racial” society; then reality set in and Republicans reminded us why that hope had not come to pass.
President Obama himself hoped to be a “post-partisan” president; then reality set in and Republicans reminded us why that could not happen.
Some have gone so far as to speculate that the GOP has become “post-policy”, and there is considerable evidence for that argument.
But on Benghazi, Republicans appear to have set a new standard. Post-reality? It is hard to say.
Speaker John A. Boehner announced Monday he will reappoint Rep. Trey Gowdy as chairman of the Select Committee on the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya in the 114th Congress.
“On September 11, 2012, four Americans were killed in a brutal terrorist attack in Libya. Two years later, the American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night — and why,” Boehner said in a statement. “That’s why I will reappoint Rep. Trey Gowdy and the Republican members of the House Select Committee to investigate the events in Benghazi in the 114th Congress. I look forward to the definitive report Chairman Gowdy and the Select Committee will present to the American people.”
(Eldridge)
Let us consider:
The House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the State Department’s independent Accountability Review Board have all published reports on the 2012 attack, and each found the same thing: none of the conspiracy theories are true.
In addition, the attack has been scrutinized by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, each of which has held hearings, and each of which failed to find even a shred of evidence to bolster the conspiracy theorists.
Do Boehner and other Republicans believe their own allies are somehow in on the conspiracy? That GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate have somehow been co-opted into hiding imaginary evidence?
(Benen)
There is no point in complaining. This sort of determined paranoia is exactly what Americans just voted for.
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Eldridge, David. “Boehner Reappoints Gowdy to Head Benghazi Panel”. Roll Call. 24 November 2014.
Benen, Steve. “When even ‘definitive’ isn’t enough for the House GOP”. msnbc. 25 November 2014.
This Is 