Books & Liturature

Republicans clearly have no interest in dropping their favorite pastime, but Democrats could put a stop to this malicious behavior by changing the Senate rules and prohibiting, at long last, all filibusters on nominations.

New York Times

President Barack Obama is greeted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol Thursday. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

March 28, 2013 | Earlier this month, during one of his new across-the-aisle good-will tours, President Obama pleaded with Senate Republicans  to ease up on their record number of filibusters of his nominees. He might as well have been talking to one of the statues in the Capitol. Republicans have made it clear that erecting hurdles for Mr. Obama is, if anything, their overriding legislative goal.

There is no historical precedent for the number of cabinet-level nominees that Republicans have blocked or delayed in the Obama administration. Chuck Hagel became the first defense secretary nominee ever filibustered. John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, was the subject of an epic filibuster by Senator Rand Paul. Kathleen Sebelius and John Bryson, the secretaries of health and human services and commerce, were subjected to 60-vote confirmation margins instead of simple majorities. Susan Rice surely would have been filibustered and thus was not nominated to be secretary of state.

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How Plutocracy Crushes Affection

Wendell E. Berry, National Endowment for the Humanities

Thanks to Evergreene Digest Reader Charlie Bloss for this contribution.

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One night in the winter of 1907, at what we have always called “the home place” in Henry County, Kentucky, my father, then six years old, sat with his older brother and listened as their parents spoke of the uses they would have for the money from their 1906 tobacco crop. The crop was to be sold at auction in Louisville on the next day. They would have been sitting in the light of a kerosene lamp, close to the stove, warming themselves before bedtime. They were not wealthy people. I believe that the debt on their farm was not fully paid, there would have been interest to pay, there would have been other debts. The depression of the 1890s would have left them burdened. Perhaps, after the income from the crop had paid their obligations, there would be some money that they could spend as they chose. At around two o’clock the next morning, my father was wakened by a horse’s shod hooves on the stones of the driveway. His father was leaving to catch the train to see the crop sold.

He came home that evening, as my father later would put it, “without a dime.” After the crop had paid its transportation to market and the commission on its sale, there was nothing left. Thus began my father’s lifelong advocacy, later my brother’s and my own, and now my daughter’s and my son’s, for small farmers and for land-conserving economies.

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• The former S.C. Republican official: ‘C*cksucker’ anti-war vet should have ‘come home in a body bag’
• Kincannon seems to think that wars are awesome, which is typical of jingoistic bastards who have never actually had to fight in one.

Breitbart Unmasked

Your eyes do not deceive you. Todd Kincannon, former General Counsel and Executive Director of the South Carolina Republican Party, would like to see more American troops come home in body bags. Or maybe he just wants Michael Prysner to get killed in combat instead of returning home to become a peace activist. Either way, Kincannon seems to think that wars are awesome, which is typical of jingoistic bastards who have never actually had to fight in one like Prysner has.

Prysner is not the first recipient of Kincannon’s uniquely disgusting tweets, either. Many people will remember his SuperBowl tweets about Trayvon Martin, who he thinks should have been put down like a rabid dog, or his habit of sharing pictures of his penis with women on Twitter and then defaming them when they ask him to stop.

But he is best known as the founder of Twitter Gulag Defense Network (hashtag #TGDN), which is a gang of right wingers who celebrate free speech by spamblocking liberal Twitter users’ accounts in an attempt to trigger the social network’s algorithm into suspending them. Judging by this tweet to Prysner, they are getting off lightly: presumably, he would rather the liberals all just die.

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Related:

Former S.C. Republican official: ‘C*cksucker’ anti-war vet should have ‘come home in a body bag’ David Edwards, Rawstory

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

Monday, March 25, 2013 | The former head of the South Carolina Republican Party on Sunday lashed out at an Iraq war veteran who now opposes the war, saying that he should have “come home in a body bag.”