Year: 2014
Invade, Leave, Repeat
We got out, but now we’ve got to go back,
‘Cause their soldiers just don’t have the knack.
At the sight of a gun
They turn tail and run,
So we’re back — on the attack — in Iraq.
Obama Justifies His ‘Minimalist’ Position
Increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking the most extreme maximalist positions, and sooner or later, that catches up with you.
— President Obama, in an interview with Tom Friedman, on the rise of the Republican far right.
Clinton Criticizes Obama’s Foreign Policy
Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview with The Atlantic, said President Obama’s lack of assistance to Syrian rebels led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq. She also criticized the slammed Obama’s foreign-policy doctrine which he recently coined as, “Don’t do stupid shit.”
Sanders Complains About Hillary Clinton’s ‘Anointment’ as Prez
She has accomplished a lot of very positive things in her career, but I’m not quite sure that the political process is one in which we anoint people.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), in an interview with Yahoo News, critical of the seeming coronation of Hillary Clinton for president.
Babies. They’ll F**k You Up.
We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him, but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his] way with parents.
— Edwin Donovan, Secret Service, explaining the agency’s strategy after a toddler squeezed between the iron bars of a fence at the White House, just before Pres. Obama was to announce air strikes on ISIS in Iraq.
GOP Congressman Claims Democratic Party Is Waging a War on White People – Ignores the Fact That a Majority of Democrats Are White
Republican Rep. Mo Brooks from Alabama has been on a tear recently. Last week, he told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that he advocated deporting all 11 million undocumented residents of the United States. (Hayes’ interview with Brooks begins at 04:55 in the video above.) According to estimates by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the cost to deport on person is about $12,500, which puts the cost to taxpayers of the mass deportation scheme advocated by big-government Republicans like Rep. Brooks at $137.5 billion.
A few days later, in an interview on right-wing radio, Rep. Brooks claimed the Democratic Party is waging a war on white people:
Boehner, Limbaugh Try to Rewrite History of GOP Push to Impeach Obama
Republicans have been beating the drum for the impeachment of Pres. Obama since the first year of his first term. Now that it appears voters will remove the GOP’s main obstacle — Democratic control of the Senate — in the November midterms, the reality is sinking in among Democrats and independents that if Republicans keep the House and take the Senate, as appears likely, they will spend the last two years of Obama’s term impeaching him.
Last week, the House laid the groundwork for impeachment when Republicans voted to give Speaker Boehner the authority to sue the president on grounds that he delayed Obamacare’s employer mandate by executive order. House Republicans hope voters have forgotten that they voted to delay the employer mandate one year earlier.
The Democrat Party has base has taken notice. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has raised $7.6 million online since Boehner announced he was suing the president. This includes 74,000 donations averaging just $19 each from 74,000 new donors. On the last Monday in July, the DCCC reported that it had raised $1 million online in 24 hours. The uptick in new donors is cause for alarm in Republican establishment circles, and by the end of last week Boehner, Rush Limbaugh and other Republican leaders were backpedaling away from impeachment as fast as they could.
