Friday, June 22, 2012
Your everything-you-need-to-know-complete guide to Fast & Furious...
Lordy, this is gonna be a long one.
I’m getting a little tired of supposedly smart people like Jon Stewart screwing up the Fast and Furious story, so I decided to do a little research on my own. My starting point was the rather well-laid out timeline Randi Rhodes started with on her June 20, 2012 Broadcast. She used the Wikipedia listing for ATF Gun Walking which itself used a Washington Post Story from July 25, 2011 about Fast and Furious to get its facts. But even she missed some things that need to be highlighted. Lord knows, Stewart screwed this thing up in his last two appearances with an appalling Fox News level of accuracy.
So, after the jump, I’m going to open with the Wikipedia page before some NRA doucebag steps in and makes bullshit changes to it. It also happens to be the piece Randi Rhodes read pretty much word for word opening up her June 20, 2012 Broadcast.
Click here to see the whole thing.
I’m getting a little tired of supposedly smart people like Jon Stewart screwing up the Fast and Furious story, so I decided to do a little research on my own. My starting point was the rather well-laid out timeline Randi Rhodes started with on her June 20, 2012 Broadcast. She used the Wikipedia listing for ATF Gun Walking which itself used a Washington Post Story from July 25, 2011 about Fast and Furious to get its facts. But even she missed some things that need to be highlighted. Lord knows, Stewart screwed this thing up in his last two appearances with an appalling Fox News level of accuracy.
So, after the jump, I’m going to open with the Wikipedia page before some NRA doucebag steps in and makes bullshit changes to it. It also happens to be the piece Randi Rhodes read pretty much word for word opening up her June 20, 2012 Broadcast.
Click here to see the whole thing.
How Jon Stewart and the fine folks at @TheDailyShow @#$%ed up Fast and Furious (VIDEO)
It started on June 20th:
Again, Jon's version of events demands you being stupid enough to believe Darrell Issa's version of events. Up until now, I never thought Jon was that stupid, but stranger things have happened.
Here's the thing, to believe Issa's version of events, you have to believe that the Acting Head of the ATF, by his own admission, knew nothing about what the ATF Phoenix Field Office was doing, but somehow the U.S. Attorney General did.
Oh, and did I mention that the Acting Head of the ATF is Issa's Star Witness, and thought he was going to get fired by the Administration, which is why he went running to Issa in the first place? Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.
And then, Jon doubled-down the next day, June 21st:
First off, it actually began with an Operation called Wide Receiver in the Bush Administration before being killed and record as Fast and Furious, and the stated purpose actually made some sense. The ATF wanted to allow these purchases to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.
Problem was, ATF let the purchases happen, they tracked the guns to the people who were using them, who were hired thugs, not the major players in the Cartel. Since the purchases didn't go high enough up the chain of command, ATF let the purchases keep happening, hoping they'd get someone better so they could make an arrest. In fact, indictments didn't start happening until Obama became President.
And, to be clear, we lost 1400 guns, still an appalling figure, but...c'mon, Jon, that's the kind of Bullshit Fox News engages in.
Then there's the letter. That was my major problem with the bit. Jon kinda left out the part where the Head of the Phoenix Field Office, may have...you know...lied to the Justice Department about the existence of the program. That could be because Justice told him in 2009 not to engage in Gunwalking (but didn't do it clearly enough), and he went ahead and engaged in it anyway.
I know, details, details.
I would like to know why the hell did Stephen Colbert have a better grip on the damn story than Stewart did?
A complete, unadulterated guide to my problems with what Jon Stewart said will be published in about 30 minutes.
Again, Jon's version of events demands you being stupid enough to believe Darrell Issa's version of events. Up until now, I never thought Jon was that stupid, but stranger things have happened.
Here's the thing, to believe Issa's version of events, you have to believe that the Acting Head of the ATF, by his own admission, knew nothing about what the ATF Phoenix Field Office was doing, but somehow the U.S. Attorney General did.
Oh, and did I mention that the Acting Head of the ATF is Issa's Star Witness, and thought he was going to get fired by the Administration, which is why he went running to Issa in the first place? Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.
And then, Jon doubled-down the next day, June 21st:
First off, it actually began with an Operation called Wide Receiver in the Bush Administration before being killed and record as Fast and Furious, and the stated purpose actually made some sense. The ATF wanted to allow these purchases to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.
Problem was, ATF let the purchases happen, they tracked the guns to the people who were using them, who were hired thugs, not the major players in the Cartel. Since the purchases didn't go high enough up the chain of command, ATF let the purchases keep happening, hoping they'd get someone better so they could make an arrest. In fact, indictments didn't start happening until Obama became President.
And, to be clear, we lost 1400 guns, still an appalling figure, but...c'mon, Jon, that's the kind of Bullshit Fox News engages in.
Then there's the letter. That was my major problem with the bit. Jon kinda left out the part where the Head of the Phoenix Field Office, may have...you know...lied to the Justice Department about the existence of the program. That could be because Justice told him in 2009 not to engage in Gunwalking (but didn't do it clearly enough), and he went ahead and engaged in it anyway.
I know, details, details.
I would like to know why the hell did Stephen Colbert have a better grip on the damn story than Stewart did?
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
A complete, unadulterated guide to my problems with what Jon Stewart said will be published in about 30 minutes.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Issa gets his information from a break-your-windows paranoid blogger. (VIDEO)
Darrell Issa, once a liar, always a liar.
To be sure, Congress has a legitimate interest in investigating Operation Fast and Furious, but Chairman Issa and Republican majority on the Committee appear to be more interested in scoring political points than in getting to the bottom of what happened," argued Keegan, who added that, “The hoops the Committee is demanding the Attorney General jump through illustrate that these contempt hearings are as partisan as they are extreme. Over the course of this ‘investigation,’ the Committee has ordered the A.G. to produce documents whose confidentiality is protected by federal law, has refused to subpoena Bush Administration officials to testify about their knowledge of the operation during their time in office, has refused to allow public testimony from officials whose testimony counters Issa’s partisan narrative, and has repeatedly rejected the A.G.’s efforts to accommodate the committee, making compliance all but impossible.
People for the American Way president Michael Keegan.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Is the GOP about to spend the next couple of Election Cycles in the wilderness?
Possibly.
Let's start off with Andrew Sullivan:
So, Romney may be forced to turn to White voters in an unprecedented fashion (i.e., run a more racist-slash-racial campaign than he's used to) in order to compete. Yet, if the Senate, specifically the Republican Senate hadn't bowed down and caved to George W. Bush 43 at every possible turn:
Let's start off with Andrew Sullivan:
After Obama's end-run around Romney on deferring deportations of young native-born Americans who have broken no law apart from being born, the Latina Oprah, Cristina Saralegui, puts her invaluable imprimatur on the president. It's getting more and more necessary for Mitt to max out his percentage of the Caucasian vote:
Most polls this spring show Obama running near the 52 percent he won among those upscale white women in 2008, and also remaining very close to his 80 percent showing among all minorities. If Obama can hold that level of support from those two groups, Romney could amass a national majority only by winning nearly two-thirds of all other whites—the men with college degrees, and the men and women without them. To put that challenge in perspective, Reagan, while winning his historic landslide, carried a combined 66.5 percent of those three groups. To defeat Obama, in other words, Romney may need to equal Reagan.
So, Romney may be forced to turn to White voters in an unprecedented fashion (i.e., run a more racist-slash-racial campaign than he's used to) in order to compete. Yet, if the Senate, specifically the Republican Senate hadn't bowed down and caved to George W. Bush 43 at every possible turn:
“The importance of the Hispanic vote to President Barack Obama’s reelection chances is practically impossible to overstate,” writes Frank Wilkinson over at Bloomberg View. He’s almost certainly right.
So here’s my question: If President George W. Bush, working with Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, had passed comprehensive immigration reform in 2005, would Democrats have a chance this year? I see how they could have won in 2008, amidst a financial crisis and Bush fatigue. But it’s harder to see how they’d win in 2012 if the Hispanic vote was split.
"An impact on Latinos for generations to come..." (VIDEO)
There's a sad state of affairs in this country when this is the first I've ever heard of the "Hispanic Oprah" as Greg Sargent put it this morning. The fault's with me. I've got to get to know Latino culture more and more in the coming years.
So, this is Cristina Saralegui's endorsement of the President. And just to be fair, I'll put up the Spanish version as well.
So, this is Cristina Saralegui's endorsement of the President. And just to be fair, I'll put up the Spanish version as well.
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