June 16, 2014 archive

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Every Sunday it’s almost guaranteed that the majority of the Sunday talk shows would be dominated by right wing neocons who have over the last 40 years managed to take this country into not just economic failure of the middle class but into being the laughing stock of the international community. This morning was no different as the war mongers and neocon war criminal were on full display.

Let’s start with “This Week” and the Bill Clinton’s former Press Secretary’s lien up. You can’t make this up, Laura Ingraham, a right wing radio talk show hack who managed to wheedle herself into a gig with ABC News, thinks that poor Eric Cantor can’t take a joke. During one of her appearances for David Brat, Cantor’s primary challenger, she suggested that Obama should have traded Cantor to the Taliban for Sgt, Bowe Bergdahl because of his stance on immigration reform. Ummm, Cantor is Jewish. She doubled down on that this morning’s “This Week” reacting to Cantor’s saying that comments like that “cheapened the debate.” Remember Daniel Pearl’s beheading, anyone?

While I dislike Eric Cantor, Laura went too far the first time and way over the antisemitism line the second. No Laura, we’re not laughing and you aren’t funny.

On “Face the Nation,” we have Senator Lindsey “I never saw a war I didn’t like” Graham on his fainting couch saying that the developments in Iraq and Syria portend another 9/11.

“The decision to withdraw U.S. forces created a vacuum,” Graham said. “Syria is launching pad. …If the central government in Iraq collapses – and that’s the goal of ISIS – Iran will own southern part of Iraq, that’s where the Shiites live; they can operate ISIS from Baghdad to Kurdistan all the way in to Syria. They will eventually march on Jordan and Lebanon – our best ally in the region is the King of Jordan – and they will attack us from that part of Iraq and Syria. According to our own Director of National Intelligence, FBI Director, the next 9/11 is coming from here.”

“That a very serious statement,” Schieffer said.

“I think it’s inevitable,” Graham replied. “They plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacked us here at home.”

Where are Rudy, “a noun, a verb and 9/11,” Guiliani and Rep. Peter, “Mr. Islamaphobia,” King (R-NY)?

But the icing on this morning’s cake was on “Meet The Press” with David “The Dancing Master” Gregory’s interview with none other than one of the chief Bush war criminals former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. When asked by Gregory about his and his neocon buddies culpability for the sectarian violence, Wolfie hedged:

   Gregory: Where you and others culpable of underestimating the level of sectarian violence, warfare in the country that creates the potential for this kind of terror states to develop today?

   Wolfowitz: Look, you use the word sectarian so did Richard Engel, This is more than just the obscure Shia/Sunni conflict. This is al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda is not on the road of defeat, al-Qaeda is on the march. Not just in Iraq and Syria and we have real enemies in the US and what we should be looking for friends. I think when we stick with our friends and those friends are not always perfect, but we stuck with the Kurds for twenty years. Northern Iraq, Kurdistan is a success story. We stuck with them South Korea for sixty years. South Korea is a miracle story if we walked away from that country in 1953, that country was a basket case.

(h/t John Amato at Crooks and Liars)

Never mind several centuries of the Sunni/Shiite rift, it’s Al Qaeda? oy.

First off Wolfowitz should be in prison in either The Hague or a max security here in the US. He shouldn’t be marched out as an expert any defense or foreign policy matter, let alone the Middle East.

Pass the antifreeze and make mine a double.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

June 16 is the 167th day of the year (168th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 198 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1933, The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed.

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 (Ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195, formerly codified at 15 U.S.C. sec. 703), was an American statute which authorized the President of the United States to regulate industry and permit cartels and monopolies in an attempt to stimulate economic recovery, and established a national public works program. The legislation was enacted in June 1933 during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislative program. Section 7(a) of the bill, which protected collective bargaining rights for unions, proved contentious (especially in the Senate), but both chambers eventually passed the legislation and President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 16, 1933. The Act had two main sections (or “titles”). Title I was devoted to industrial recovery, and authorized the promulgation of industrial codes of fair competition, guaranteed trade union rights, permitted the regulation of working standards, and regulated the price of certain refined petroleum products and their transportation. Title II established the Public Works Administration, outlined the projects and funding opportunities it could engage in, and funded the Act.

The Act was implemented by the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Very large numbers of regulations were generated under the authority granted to the NRA by the Act, which led to a significant loss of political support for Roosevelt and the New Deal. The NIRA was set to expire in June 1935, but in a major constitutional ruling the U.S. Supreme Court held Title I of the Act unconstitutional on May 27, 1935, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). The National Industrial Recovery Act is widely considered a policy failure, both in the 1930s and by historians today. Disputes over the reasons for this failure continue, however. Among the suggested causes are that the Act promoted economically harmful monopolies, that the Act lacked critical support from the business community, and that the Act was poorly administered. The Act encouraged union organizing, which led to significant labor unrest. The Act had no mechanisms for handling these problems, which led Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.