Some Fries With Your Stupid, Reince?

Some Fries With Your Stupid, Reince?.

“The Republican National Committee has backed itself into a corner with no easy way out. Never before have more than 10 candidates squared off on stage for a televised GOP presidential debate—but by the time the first party-sanctioned event kicks off in less than three months time, there could be more than twice that number of officially declared candidates.

“That reality has left the GOP in a pickle. Party officials want enough candidates on stage to avoid having it look like they’re playing favorites, but they will also need to winnow the field considerably or risk having the candidates’ opening statements followed immediately by their closing ones. How they decide to strike that balance could effectively end the dreams of as many as a dozen GOP hopefuls months before the first nominating contest even happens.

“…The situation has grown so fraught that the RNC has begun scrambling to publicly foist much of the responsibility for who get’s invited—and who doesn’t—onto the network that will televise each debate. “Ultimately, it’s the networks’ decision,” RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said over the weekend. “There’s an obligation for the party to make sure the standard is fair. But it’s not our decision.” Translation: If you don’t like what you see on stage, blame the media!”

We’ve long said that the monster that Republicans created (Fox News) has ended up becoming the master, a statement that sends Republicans into a frothing, mad dog rage. But the truth is that Fox went from being a propaganda outlet to being the entity that actually sets the agenda.

Fox News will be the first network to host the debate, so they get to pick the debaters as well as the questions; this will also winnow the field to whomever Fox deigns to support.

So fellow libtards, the next time you get challenged on our usual claims that Fox is actually running the Republican Party, here’s your evidence. So Reince, how is that rebranding working out?

Reflection

The Big Bang Bucket List Of A Buddhist Blogger

The Intimacy Acceleration

CAT CARRIES KITTEN INSIDE TURKISH MOSQUE

NO, NOT THE TICKLES

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credit-bits-and-pieces

credit-tastefully-offensive

credit-bits-and-pieces

credit-tastefully-offensive

Music – Debbie Harry – Ghost Riders In The Sky (rare recording)

The Day in a Picture

The Day in a Quote

The Thought For Today

Life Is A Box Of Chocolates

The Robin Hood Tax – From Walking Dead To Paying It Forward

 

None of this will happen because Republicans keep screaming ‘socialism’.

Yet by NOT doing this, by continuing to let the corporations, the financial systems, the wealthy reap huge profits and NOT pay it forward……it will not be that long before there isn’t much left…..

‘Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Finland all provide free college educations for qualified students’.

‘That’s socially very healthy and encourages an egalitarian society’.

‘Free college education for all Americans shouldn’t be looked at as a unicorn’.

‘Keith Ellison explained to Minneapolis voters what he’s trying to accomplish’.

“America’s working families need their country to invest in them again. The money raised from a wafer-thin tax on Wall Street’s high frequency trades could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our families, protect our environment and increase opportunity for all Americans. If the United States joins the dozens of other nations already benefitting from a financial transaction tax, we can create millions of jobs, while also reducing dangerous market volatility.”

• ‘The legislation introduced by Sanders and Ellison calls for a 50-cent transaction tax on every $100 of trades on stock sales and lesser amounts on transactions involving bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments’.

 

The Banker

‘Passage would mean the U.S. has joined dozens of other nations– including every other major global financial market, including the U.K. and the E.U.– in a growing system of financial transaction taxes’.
From : http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-robin-hood-tax-would-be-major.html

Blog Running – ‘Intractable Iraq’ by digby

 

If you’re tired of “knowing what we know now what would you have done’ and want to ask ‘what do we know and what should we do’ – this is the best, simplest and most importantly – clear cut explanation of what is going on.

‘If you’re confused about what’s happening in Iraq right now, don’t feel alone. But this piece by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker outlines the fundamental issues — and they’re frighteningly huge’:

“[M]ost of Anbar’s populated areas are now in ISIS’s hands. (Fallujah has been under ISIS control since last year.) The big airbase at Al Assad, which was the center for much of the Iraqi Army’s (and American) operations, is now cut off in the desert. “The fall of Ramadi is a game-changer,” Jessica Lewis McFate, the head of research at the Institute for the Study of War, which released a detailed report on the war just before Ramadi’s fall, said. “Whatever confidence remained the Iraqi security forces is likely to collapse.”

“In Baghdad, Prime Minister Abadi faces a stark choice”:

• “Losing Anbar Province to ISIS or’
• ‘Unleashing Shiite militias to reconquer the place, only to permanently alienate an occupied Sunni population”.

“The militias, some of which were responsible for widespread atrocities during the Iraqi civil war between 2005 and 2008, are generally much more effective than the Iraqi Army”.

“Despite their success, American officials are deeply worried about the prospect of the Iraqi security forces being completely taken over by gangs of Shiite gunmen, and they have leaned on Prime Minister Abadi to keep the militias out of Ramadi”.

“For one thing, the militias are trained and backed by Iran, whose influence, despite the country’s desire to crush ISIS, often runs directly against that of the United States. During the American war in Iraq, those same Shiite militias, under Iranian direction, killed hundreds of Americans soldiers”.

“But the most important reason the Americans are opposing the use of Shiite militias to help regain control of Anbar Province is that they don’t want the campaign against ISIS to become an entirely sectarian war”.

‘And that’s the central conundrum of the campaign against ISIS’.

‘The two countries whose territory ISIS has captured, Iraq and Syria, are embroiled in conflicts that are almost entirely demarcated by religion’.

‘In Iraq, it’s Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Kurd (most Kurds are Sunnis, so there’s an ethnic element to the struggle there)’.

• ‘In Syria, the Sunni opposition, dominated by ISIS and the Al Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra, is facing off against a government dominated by an Alawite minority’.
• ‘In Iraq and in Syria, the only effective fighting forces—on either side—are based in sect or ethnicity’.

‘What happens now’?

‘Under intense pressure from Iraq’s Shiite politicians (he is one himself), as well as from the Iranians, Abadi appears to be preparing to send in the militias. The results will not be pretty’.
‘Since the end of the First World War, both Iraq and Syria have been artificial states, drawn from the ruins of a fallen empire with little regard for sect, tribe, or ethnicity’.
‘At best, those artificial states could hope for a day when their people would set aside their more primal loyalties in favor of a broader sense of nationhood’.

‘Today, as both Iraq and Syria writhe in sectarian conflicts, the sense of nationhood that could bind those states together seems as elusive as it’s ever been’.

‘Yes, we’re still fighting World War I’.

‘That’s how screwed up everything is’.

‘And while people like Lindsay Graham and Bob Gates are caterwauling about the lack of a “middle east strategy” their idea of one is to do more of the same stuff that led us to the place we are today. (You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again in the hopes it will get a different result …)’

‘And this whole epic disaster also shows that as much as some might want to belittle “identity politics” and insult people’s entire religion because of the acts of a few, it may not be such a grand idea’.

‘It turns out people take their identities and religion quite seriously. They’ll die for that stuff’.
From : http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/intractable-iraq.html