Motley Moose – Archive

As Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times, the nation’s paper of record, in his op-ed this morning, “despite the foreign policy triumph for the United States, it isn’t the end of terrorism.” Already Taliban leaders are vowing to avenge Osama bin Laden and no doubt his death does not change the fundamental situation on the ground in Afghanistan though for Pakistan hard questions must be asked.

How did the world’s most wanted man live in a luxury compound in the hill resort town of Abbottabad just a 62 mile drive (35 miles as the crow flies) from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad? Moreover, the compound built in 2005 was just a stone’s throw from a Pakistani military training base. Most tellingly, the Pakistani government was not informed beforehand of the US special forces’ raid. This inability to trust even the highest echelons of Pakistan’s civilian-military-intelligence establishment is, in my view, the single most disturbing takeaway from this incident. It portends hard choices.

It’s hard to say whether more I’m shocked by former Senator Rick Santorum’s sheer stupidity or outraged by the flippant callousness of his remarks. I suspect the former since the latter should not surprise even as the inhumanity remains ever so striking. For the nation to invest in the health and well being of its citizens is not now, nor is it likely to ever be in the foreseeable future, a priority for the GOP, but for a likely Presidential candidate to under any condition to advocate for a debt default simply speaks of an outrageous ignorance of economics and unspeakable recklessness.

Via Think Progress:

In Florida, the Republican controlled state legislature wants to overhaul election laws in ways critics say would disenfranchise voters and extend the dominance of the GOP in the state.

This latest onslaught to disenfranchise voters comes after Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott rescinded the rules allowing for automatic restoration of voting rights of tens of thousands of convicted nonviolent felons in the state, a move that critics say smacks of a return to Jim Crow-era laws in the Sunshine State since felons tend to be disproportionately members of minority groups.

Under the new rules established in March, Florida felons will have to wait a minimum of five years after they’ve served their sentences to apply for the right to vote. More serious offenders would have to wait seven years. Florida now joins Kentucky, Virginia and Iowa as the only states that deny felons automatic restoration of their rights to vote in elections after having served their sentences.

But now the state legislature is pushing a bill to cut early voting time by half, to make it harder for grass roots groups to register voters and to require people to vote provisionally if they moved since the last time they voted — a change elections supervisors say would affect the young and the poor the most. Both groups are traditionally Democratic voters. Republicans argue that move is needed to save money.

In 2006, then Senator Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. At the time, he said this:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better

In 2007 and in 2008, when the Senate voted to increase the limit by $850 billion and $800 billion respectively, Senator Obama did not even bother to vote. He now probably wishes he hadn’t voted on the issue in 2006. Now, of course, the President is singing a different tune.

In an interview to be aired by ABC News, President Obama has admitted that politics drove his thinking in 2006 when he voted against raising the debt limit. “That was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country,” Obama said, “I’m the first one to acknowledge it.”

Obama said he now understands why Republicans are concerned about voting to raise the debt limit, characterizing it as a “lousy vote.” He continued, “Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars.”

The President added if Senators could see what he sees as President, they wouldn’t vote against raising the limit. “As President, you start realizing…we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith [and] credit of the United States.”

The House and Senate passed the compromise legislation to finance the Federal government for the balance FY 2011, with 59 House Republicans breaking ranks to vote against the deal. The overall vote in the House was 260-167. Eighty-one Democrats gave House Speaker John Boehner the votes needed for the bill’s passage.

In the Senate, the vote was 81-19, with dissenting votes mostly coming from more conservative Republicans. In the Senate, 48 Democrats, 32 Republicans and independent Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut voted in favor.