June 4, 2014

Dem leader assails GOP over soldier swap

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top Democrat in the Senate is accusing Republicans of trying to score political points with their criticism of President Barack Obama over the swap of an American solider for five members of the Taliban held at Guantanamo.

Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday read aloud past statements from Senate Republicans who had said no member of the armed forces should be left behind. Reid criticized the senators for now denouncing the exchange of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for the five detainees.

Reid said questions regarding Bergdahl’s disappearance should be addressed by the Army, not the “Monday morning quarterbacks” on Capitol Hill.

He said the alternative to the swap would have been to leave Bergdahl with the Taliban. He asserted that America is glad Bergdahl is free.

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/06/04/dem_leader_assails_gop_over_soldier_swap/

June 4, 2014

Fox ‘expert’ links Bowe Bergdahl’s ballet dancing to Obama’s lack of ‘Americanism’

By David Edwards
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 10:26 EDT

Fox News Medical A-Team psychiatrist Keith Ablow on Wednesday suggested that returning prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s history of “narcissistic” ballet dancing was an example of President Barack Obama’s lack of “Americanism.”

On the Wednesday edition of Fox & Friends, host Steve Doocy asked Ablow to analyze Bergdahl based on personal details about his life before joining the military.

“He was homeschooled,” Doocy explained. “His family, they were Calvinists. We know that at one point, he became involved in ballet, he was a lifter.”

Ablow said that those sounded like “good things,” but he argued that they showed a “narcissistic core, where he’s developing a taste for adventure, for outsized adventure.”

The doctor admitted that he had not evaluated the Bergdahl family formally, but that they seemed to have a “desire to distance oneself from institutions, to diminish the, sort of, rule of law, and to elevate the individual above all else” because they did not “feel part of our country.”

“The fact that he was a dancer and a lifter, not a weight lifter, but he would lift up and throw the other ballerina, what does that mean?” co-host Brian Kilmeade wondered.

Ablow speculated that Bergdahl had been “recruited” by female dancers.

“Front and center is this guy’s M.O., unless it doesn’t feed him narcissistically, you can’t give him a job unless you’re going to tell him you’re the star, and we’re going to keep you at a throttle of 12 out of 10,” he opined.

And then Ablow connected the dots from ballet to the president of the United States.

“Here’s the thing — I’ve been saying it before — Barack Obama does not have the will of the American people, Americanism in his soul,” he insisted. “And this swap — somebody who may not feel very American for five people who definitely don’t — is symptomatic of that. It was bound to happen when you have a leader that doesn’t affiliate with patriotism.”

Doocy agreed that the president “definitely wanted out of Afghanistan, and maybe [the prisoner swap] is his way of closing Gitmo.”

“He wants out of America!” Ablow interrupted. “Trust me.”

Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast June 4, 2014.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/fox-expert-links-bowe-bergdahls-ballet-dancing-to-obamas-lack-of-americanism/

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Posted with permission

June 4, 2014

Maureen Dowd Ate Too Much Pot In Denver And Freaked Out

CATHERINE THOMPSON – JUNE 4, 2014, 10:00 AM EDT

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd got really high in Denver and wrote a column to tell you exactly how it went down, all in the name of journalism.

In the column published Tuesday, Dowd explained that she felt the need to sample some edibles herself in order to fully report on the dawn of legal marijuana in Colorado. She nibbled on a candy bar laced with pot and the experiment didn't exactly go well for her:

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/maureen-dowd-pot-column

June 4, 2014

Oliver North Of All People Blasts Obama For Financing Terrorist Orgs In Bergdahl Swap

TOM KLUDT – JUNE 4, 2014, 10:21 AM EDT

Naturally, Lt. Col. Oliver North has plenty to say about the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

North, the former Reagan aide-turned-conservative commentator best-known for his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, was on a mission Tuesday to hand down his indictment of the prisoner swap that secured Bergdahl's rescue.

Speaking to former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) on his Newsmax program, North demanded to know if a ransom was paid to terrorists in order to execute the swap.

“Was there a ransom paid?" North said. "Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/oliver-north-bowe-bergdahl

June 4, 2014

NY man charged in racial attack on V. Stiviano, woman behind LA Clippers scandal

Source: Reuters

A Long Island, New York, man was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the weekend assault of V. Stiviano, the woman who recorded Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist remarks that got him banned from the NBA.

Police said Dominick Diorio, 40, was arrested at his home in Old Bethpage, New York, and charged with assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment, and other charges for punching Stiviano in the face outside the Gansevoort Hotel in New York on Sunday.

The attack left Stivano’s face swollen and red, her attorney Mac Nehoray, told CNN.

New York Police Department Detective Brian Sessa said the investigation is still ongoing.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/ny-man-charged-in-racial-attack-on-v-stiviano-woman-behind-la-clippers-scandal/

June 4, 2014

Report: Videos Showed Bergdahl's Rapidly Deteriorating Health

Source: TPM

CATHERINE THOMPSON – JUNE 4, 2014, 9:03 AM EDT

Some critics of the prisoner swap that exchanged Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees said there was no evidence, as President Barack Obama insisted in a press conference Tuesday, that the soldier's deteriorating health necessitated swift action to secure his release.

But the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night that the U.S. intelligence community had evidence of Bergdahl's failing health, based on a secret analysis of two videos of the soldier in captivity that were provided to U.S. officials. One was shot in 2011 and the other in December 2013, the latter of which has never been publicly shown.

Officials who saw the recent video described Bergdahl's condition to the Journal as "alarming." The analysis of the videos showing the accelerating decline of Bergdahl's health partially convinced some holdouts within the Obama administration, like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as well as leaders in the Pentagon to back the proposed deal, according to the Journal.

One anonymous defense official summed up the calculus behind the exchange: Bergdahl's value as a prisoner was declining rapidly, along with his health, as U.S. troops were slated to pull out of Afghanistan.


Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/secret-videos-bergdahl-deteriorating-health

June 4, 2014

Sharyl Attkisson’s principled quest to destroy what’s left of her credibility

Attkisson quit CBS over ideological interference, and ended up at Heritage's terrible new website

SIMON MALOY

Sharyl Attkisson has principles. The former CBS News investigative correspondent became a heroine to conservatives for her intense, unerring, borderline obsessive focus on Benghazi. She ended up resigning from the network in March, implying that her bosses were trying to censor her and infect her reporting with malicious political bias. With that act of career martyrdom she instantly became a candidate for canonization by right-wing pundits and activists, and an important figure in the ongoing Benghazi conspiracy, which assumes a certain amount of media complicity in covering up THE TRUTH.

Since then Attkisson has made the rounds with conservative journalists, helping to confirm their already firmly cemented belief that the mainstream media is infested with sneaky liberals who act on orders from the Obama White House. Meanwhile, the rest of us have been wondering where Attkisson would go to practice her brand of fiercely independent journalism – where she could be free from political influence and the corrupting forces of ideology.

Now we know. The Heritage Foundation.

The right-wing think tank debuted a brand new website yesterday called The Daily Signal, which, according to its founders, will offer “straight-down-the-middle journalism.” Attkisson has signed on to the site as a “senior independent contributor,” a title that has no actual meaning but does quite noticeably contain the word “independent.” The site’s launch featured an interview with Attkisson in which she decries the “tendency in the news media, on the part of some managers, to censor or block stories that don’t fall in line with the message they want sent to the viewers.”

Again, to escape ideological corruption, she went to the Heritage Foundation.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/04/sharyl_attkissons_principled_quest_to_destroy_whats_left_of_her_credibility/

June 4, 2014

Laura Ingraham’s fear of children: Inside her latest xenophobic assault

In her America, if we don't crack down on immigrants, little kids will ruin "our" way of life and take "our" jobs

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported a terrible story of the uncovering of a mass grave in which the bodies of 800 children were apparently thrown haphazardly over a period of years. The mass grave was a septic tank. No, this wasn’t another report from the various conflagrations in the Middle East or an ancient people’s burial ground. It was found on the grounds of a 20th century Catholic unwed mothers’ home in Ireland.

This was one of those places where desperate girls were shunted to be chastised and used as indentured servants as they awaited the birth of their “illegitimate” children — children who were, by necessity, left behind to be raised in “The Home” or adopted out, if they were lucky. A lot of girls passed through those walls over the course of more than 40 years. Evidently, a lot of their children never left.

Hopefully, this sort of thing could never happen again. The Obama administration is taking humanitarian action on behalf of unaccompanied children who are crossing the border between Mexico and the U.S. According to this report, the numbers of such kids have been surging recently, and Health and Human Services is caring for as many as 60,000 this year, up from a mere 5,800 just a few years ago. Most of these kids are from Central America, escaping violence and economic despair. (Mexican children are usually repatriated at the border.) It’s a crisis of such proportion that the administration is asking for additional funds to manage it.

These are kids, some of them quite little, many of them girls. They are in desperate straits. One would certainly assume that any person of faith would be compassionate toward children who have done nothing more than try to escape a terrible fate and find a new life somewhere else. But that is not what many of our most ardent “right-to-life” defenders of children and “family values” have to say about it, of course. Much like their forebears in that Catholic home for unwed mothers, they have no sympathy for either the parents who are so desperate they send their little children to America alone in the hope they can find a better life, or the poor kids who actually make it here.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/04/laura_ingrahams_fear_of_children_inside_her_latest_xenophobic_assault/

June 4, 2014

Stewart Rips Fox: You'd Like Bergdahl's Dad If He Was In 'Duck Dynasty'

By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 0:19 EDT

Daily Show host Jon Stewart tore into Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday over his criticizing the father of recently-released American POW Bowe Bergdahl for his beard, considering the Fox lovefest over the hirsute Duck Dynasty clan.

“First of all, who the f*ck are you to judge what a guy does if he thinks it might help him get his son back?” Stewart asked Kilmeade. “And I don’t want to complicate your hatred of facial hair there, friend, but my guess is if you gave Bob Berg-dahl a bandana and a duck, you’d like him just f*cking fine.”

Stewart also called old adversary Sean Hannity out for mispronouncing the former Taliban prisoner’s last name as “Berg-dahl,” as opposed to “Berg-dahl.”

“Is that how we’re pronouncing it now?” Stewart asked mockingly. “I guess the purposeful mispronunciation of a soldier’s last name to make it sound ‘Arabic’ is not purposeful. I mean, Sean Hannity’s not an a*s-hole, right? Why would he do that?”

Overall, Stewart observed, it took just three days for coverage of the move by President Barack Obama’s administration to exchange Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees to sour the release of the last U.S. prisoner of war, particularly when conservatives opened their criticism with the cliche, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“What are you talking about? We always negotiate with terrorists,” Stewart said. “Saying we don’t negotiate with terrorists is our opening negotiation: ‘We are not negotiating with you terrorists … and your response is?’”

Watch Stewart’s commentary, as posted online on Tuesday, below.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/jon-stewart-blasts-fox-youd-love-bergdahls-dad-if-he-wore-a-duck-dynasty-bandana/

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Posted with permission

June 4, 2014

The Bowe Bergdahl Story Is Right-Wing Crack

Michael Tomasky

Never mind that Bush would have done the same as Obama. Republicans are hitting the pipe big time on the ‘deserter’—and their creepy bottom line is that he should have been left to die.

I was amazed but not surprised by my Twitter feed Monday. More than 200 tweets from conservatives, I would estimate, calling me a host of names and Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a menu of worse ones. That’s the most ever in one day, I think, even more than for my most scorching anti-NRA columns, which have heretofore set the gold standard for inspiring drooling right-wing vitriol.

I was not, as I say, surprised. This story has every element right-wingers dream of. Every dark suspicion they harbor about President Obama can be wedged into the narrative conservatives are constructing about how Saturday’s prisoner exchange supposedly went down and what the president’s presumed motivations were. So I knew instantly, when I read Michael Hastings’s 2012 Rolling Stone profile of Bergdahl on Sunday afternoon, that this was going to be the next Benghazi. The story is right-wing crack. And sure enough, Republicans are hitting the pipe big time.

Some of the wilder criticisms of me notwithstanding, my column Monday made two basic points. First, if a Republican president had swapped five Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, all the people howling today would be spinning it positively. And second, while there are legitimate questions here—yes, I wrote that it was “fair to ask whether the price” of Bergdahl’s freedom was “too high”—what we’re about to get is another relentlessly politicized series of investigations that will be aimed not at determining the truth but at trying to turn possible errors of judgment by the White House into high crimes and misdemeanors. That’s the game here. Anyone who denies it is being naively or intentionally delusional.

Time, even the short amount that has passed between then and now, has proved me all too prescient—not that I’m patting myself on the back; it was a painfully easy call. The most notable development Tuesday was that former Romney adviser Richard Grenell was found to be setting up interviews for soldiers in Bergdahl’s battalion who wanted to go public trashing him. It may be, as Grenell’s partner said, that the soldiers found him on Twitter and it just kind of worked out that way. But the bottom line is what it is. These soldiers joining forces with a PR guy who used to work for John Bolton and then for candidate Mitt Romney, a man who is so deeply enmeshed in partisan politics, puts a political coloration on their words whether they mean it to or not.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/04/the-bowe-bergdahl-story-is-right-wing-crack.html